{LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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| UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 



SEEMONS 



BY THE LATE 



BOBERT S. OANDLISH, D.D. 



THE WORKS OF ROBERT S. CANDLISH, D.D. 

Late Principal of the New College, Edinburgh. 



i. 
DISCOURSES ON THE SONSHIP AND BROTHERHOOD OF 

BELIEVERS, and other Kindred Subjects. Crown 8vo, price 7s. 6d. 

11. 
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN. New Edition. 2 vols. fcap. 8vo, 
price 10s. 6d 

in. 
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. New Edition. 2 vols. fcap. 8vo, 
price 10s. 6d. 

IV. 

THE BOOK OF GENESIS : a Series of Discourses. 2 vols. fcap. 8vo, price 
10s. 6d. 

v. 
LIFE IN A RISEN SAVIOUR. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. price 7 s. 6d. 

VI. 

SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, price 7 s. 6d. 

VII. 

THE CHRISTIAN'S SACRIFICE AND SERVICE OF PRAISE; 

or, The Two Great Commandments. Crown 8vo, price 7s. 6d. 

VIII. 

THE ATONEMENT, ITS EFFICACY AND EXTENT. Crown 8vo, 

price 7s. 6d. 

IX. 

REASON AND REVELATION. Crown 8vo, price 3 s. 6d. 

x. 
THE RELATIVE DUTIES OF HOME LIFE. Small fcap., price is,6d. 

XI. 

BETHANY; or, COMFORT IN SORROW AND HOPE IN 
DEATH. Small fcap., price is. 



> 



&> 



MEMORIAL VOLUME 



?t 



SERMONS 



BY THE LATE 



KOBERT S. CANDLISH, D.D. 



MINISTER OF FREE ST. GEORGE S, AND PRINCIPAL OF THE 
NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH 



WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE 




NEW YORK 
R CARTER & BROS- 530 BROADWAY 

1874 



I&X3178 
,£•£,^4- 



Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. 



CONTENTS. 



PEEFACE ..... 

I. Sowers and Eeapers (John iv. 37) 
II. The Man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy ii. 5) 

III. The Simplicity that is in Christ (2 Corinthians 

xi. 3) . . 

IV. Death and Life with Christ (Colossians iii. 3) 
V. Isaiah's Vision (Isaiah vi. 1-8) . 

VI. Faith glorifying God (Eomans iv. 20) 

VII. Enduring as seeing the Invisible One 
(Hebrews xi. 27) . 

VIII. The Sin of Carefulness (Lnke xii. 22-40) 

IX. Thorough-going Christianity (Judges ii. 1-5) 

X. The Oath of God (Hebrews vi. 18) . . 

XI. The Indwelling Word of Christ (Colossians 
iii. 16) ... 

XII. Christ the only Gain (Philippians iii. 8, 9) 

XIII. The Foundation of God (2 Timothy ii. 19) 



PAGE 

i 

1 
24 

43 

67 

86 

105 

125 
139 
155 
170 

188 
203 
220 



V1U CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

XIV. Strangers and Pilgrims (Hebrews xi. 13) . 235 

XV. Living and Dying to the Lord (Komans 

xiv. 7, 8) . . .250 

XVI. Christ's Lordship over the Dead and Living 

(Romans xiv. 9) • . . . . 286 

XVII. Work for the Lord and Welfare in the 

Lord (Ezra vi. 14) . . . 284 

XVIII. The Righteous Reward (Hebrews vi. 10 ; xi. 26) 301 



PREFACE. 



Eobert Smith Candlish was born at Edinburgh on the 
23d of March 1806, being the youngest child of James 
Candlish, a teacher of medicine there. His mother was 
Jane Smith, one of the six " Mauchline belles " celebrated 
by Eobert Burns, who said of her, " Miss Smith she has 
wit/' His father, whose surname was originally 
M'Cancllish, but who dropped the Celtic prefix when at 
Glasgow College, was also a friend of the poet. He died 
very suddenly, a few weeks after his son Eobert was 
born, April 29, 1806 ; and thereupon his widow with her 
family, consisting of two sons and two daughters, removed 
to Glasgow, where they continued to reside for many 
years. There, accordingly, Eobert Candlish spent his 
early days. He was at first a somewhat delicate and 
rather timid boy, but soon getting over this, he joined 
with hearty enjoyment in the games and amusements 
of his companions. He entered Glasgow College, 10th 
October 1818, at the early age of twelve ; and attended 
the gown or undergraduate classes for five sessions, 
during which he gained many prizes, and in due time took 
the degree of M.A. At this time Dr. Chalmers was min- 
ister of St. John's church and parish, and had as his assist- 
ant Edward Irving, whose great gifts as a preacher were 



X PEEFACE. 

not then generally appreciated. The church was crowded 
when Dr. Chalmers preached, but comparatively empty 
when his assistant was to occupy the pulpit. Eobert 
Candlish, however, with a few friends and fellow-students, 
while fully appreciating the eloquence of Dr. Chalmers, 
enjoyed almost as much the services of his then un- 
popular assistant, and was one of his regular hearers. In 
1823 he entered the Divinity Hall of the Church of 
Scotland, which he attended during three regular sessions, 
completing the course required by the Church by one 
partial session, and finally leaving college in December 
1826. The Professor of Divinity in those days was Dr. 
Stevenson MacGill, a man of earnest piety and de- 
cidedly evangelical opinions, who contributed much, by 
his quiet influence, to the spread of sound doctrine and 
the advance of spiritual life among the ministers of the 
Scottish Church. 

During a great part of his college course Eobert 
Candlish was largely employed in private teaching, 
sometimes as much as eight or ten hours a day, in ad- 
dition to his studies. In 1826 he went with Sir Hugh 
Hume-Campbell, as private tutor, to Eton College, where 
he remained till 1829, thus getting an opportunity of 
seeing something of English school and church life. 
Meanwhile, when at home during one of his vacations, he 
was licensed as a preacher of the gospel by the Presbytery 
of Glasgow, August 6, 1828 ; and on returning to reside 
in Glasgow in 1829 he was engaged as assistant by Dr. 
Gavin Gibb, the minister of St. Andrew's, in that city. 
Though not yet ordained as a minister, he had the entire 



PREFACE. XI 

charge of the congregation, as well as the whole supply 
of the pulpit ; and he preached regularly twice every 
Sabbath, only occasionally exchanging services with 
other ministers. In this capacity, while almost entirely 
unknown, he prepared and delivered, in the ordinary 
course of his duty, some of those sermons that after- 
wards made a profound impression in St. George's, 
Edinburgh, and established his fame as a preacher. He 
enjoyed at this time the companionship and friendship 
of the Eev. David Welsh, then minister of St. David's, 
who early appreciated his gifts, and frequently invited 
him to preach to his own congregation. This friendship 
continued warm and unbroken till the too early death 
of Dr. Welsh in 1845. With Dr. Smyth of St. George's, 
Dr. Henderson of St. Enoch's, and Dr. Eobert Buchanan 
of the Tron Church, he also formed early and life-long 
friendships. During these years, domestic sorrow had 
visited the home of the young preacher. One of his 
sisters had died in 1827, and his only brother, James 
Smith Candlish, a young man of great gifts, and much 
beloved by his relatives and friends, was cut off, just 
as he was entering a most promising career in the 
medical profession, and had been appointed Professor of 
Surgery in the Andersonian University. He died of 
fever, September 15, 1829. 

On the death of Dr. Gibb in June 1831, Mr. 
Candlish's engagement in St. Andrew's came to an end, 
and thereafter he became assistant to Mr. Gregor, the 
minister of the country parish of Bonhill, in the vale of 
Leven, Dumbartonshire. Here, too, the whole of the 



Xll PREFACE. 

pulpit and pastoral duties were entrusted to him, and 
lie discharged them with such zeal and diligence as to 
endear himself to the hearts of the people. In this 
position he remained for two years and three months. 
But though he had been thus long engaged in full 
ministerial work ; he was still but little known 
beyond a small circle as an able and evangelical 
preacher, and seemed as far as ever from obtaining, 
what was then the utmost aim of his ambition, some 
small country charge as ordained minister. So little 
prospect did there seem of this, that he seriously 
contemplated going out to the colonies, and actually 
offered himself for work in Canada. 

But the great Head of the Church had another 
position preparing for him. The congregation of St. 
George's, Edinburgh, had been raised to the high- 
est position in that city by the zeal and eloquence of 
Dr. Andrew Thomson, who was suddenly cut off in 183 1. 
It was soon after deprived of the services of his 
saintly successor Mr. Martin, by the state of his health, 
which required a residence in Italy. His place was 
supplied by assistants ; and in January 1834, Mr. 
Candlish succeeded his friend Mr. Boxburgh (now Dr. 
Boxburgh, of Free St. John's, Glasgow) in this capacity. 
When Mr. Martin's ill health was found to continue, 
and it became necessary to have an ordained assistant 
and successor, the young preacher from the West had 
so proved his gifts, and gained the hearts of the flock, 
that he was chosen to this office ; but Mr. Martin 
having died in Italy in the following May, Bobert 



PREFACE. Xlll 

Smith. Candlish was ordained to the entire charge of 



the congregation on the 14th of August. 

In the summer of 1833 he had preached on four 
Sabbaths in the National Scotch Church, Eegent Square, 
London, then vacant by the removal of Edward Irving ; 
and had made so favourable an impression that the 
session and congregation desired earnestly to have him 
as their minister. They were, however, not in a position 
to give him any invitation to London till the spring 
of the next year, by which time steps had begun to 
be taken towards his settlement in St. George's. Though 
he accepted this as the prior call ; the circumstance now 
mentioned led to a warm and lasting friendship between 
Dr. Candlish and some of the elders of Regent Square 
Church ; and was the first, though not the last, link 
that connected him with that congregation. 

The new ministry in St. George's was thoroughly 
efficient. Not only was the power of the pulpit fully 
maintained, but pastoral visitation and works of 
Christian beneficence were zealously and diligently con- 
ducted ; and the members of the congregation set to 
working for the cause of Christ. One result of these 
labours was the formation of the congregation of St. 
Luke's, out of a section of St. George's parish, the first 
of a series of efforts in Home Mission and Church 
extension that the congregation successfully made. 

But the even tenor of this course of Christian use- 
fulness was somewhat broken, though never interrupted, 
by the troubles of the Church of Scotland, which called 
the minister of St. George's to take an active part in the 



XIV PREFACE. 

conflict she was then waging for her rights and liberties. 
He was a member of General Assembly in 1839, when 
the Honse of Lords had just given the final decision on 
the first Auchterarder case, denying the legality of the 
Veto Act of 1834, by which the Church had sought to 
secure the freedom of her people in the purely spiritual 
matter of the calling and ordination of ministers over 
them. The Moderate party proposed that that Act 
should, without being repealed by the Church, be thence- 
forth disregarded, since it had been declared illegal by 
the supreme civil tribunals of the country. In the debate 
on this point, Mr. Candlish made his first Assembly 
speech. It was in support of the view that, as the Veto 
Law was not of a civil nature, it could not be given up 
by the Church in deference to the Civil Courts, with- 
out surrendering her spiritual independence as a Church 
of Christ ; and it was more especially called forth 
by a motion made by Dr. Muir, attempting a sort of 
middle course or compromise between the two opposing 
principles. " The objections to the scheme were stated," 
says Dr. Buchanan, "and urged with singular felicity 
and force, by one who was destined from that day for- 
ward to exert perhaps a greater influence than any 
other single individual in the Church, upon the conduct 
and issue of this eventful controversy. The reputation 
of Mr. Candlish as a preacher was already well known. 
His extraordinary talents in debate and his rare capacity 
for business, not hitherto having had any adequate 
occasion to call them forth, were as yet undiscovered 
by the public, probably undiscovered even by himself. 



PREFACE. XV 

They seemed, however, to have needed no process of 
training to bring them to maturity. The very first 
effort fonnd him abreast of the most practised and 
powerful orators, and as much at home in the manage- 
ment of affairs as those who had made this the study of 
their life. There was a glorious battle to fight, and a 
great work to do on the arena of the Church of Scotland ; 
and in him, as well as in others evidently raised up for 
the emergency, the Lord had his fitting instruments 
prepared." * 

Mr. Candlish's powers in debate and in the conduct 
of business led to his having some of the most impor- 
tant public duties in the Church entrusted to him, as 
new and greater complications arose ; especially from the 
course pursued by the Presbytery of Strathbogie, in the 
Marnoch case. The majority of that Church Court re- 
solved, in disobedience to the express injunctions of their 
ecclesiastical superiors, and in deference to the Civil 
Court, to ordain to the charge of the parish of Mar- 
noch a man, against whom the whole congregation 
solemnly protested ; and it became necessary to suspend 
them from their office, not as a punishment, but simply 
to prevent their committing this gross outrage in the 
name of the Church. A special meeting of the Com- 
mission of Assembly was held in December 1839, at 
which Mr. Candlish moved, and carried by a majority 
of 121 to 14, the suspension of seven ministers of the 
Presbytery of Strathbogie. 

Immediately thereupon he had to go down to that 

* Ten Years' Conflict, vol. i. pp. 460-1.— Ed. 1854. 



XVI PKEFACE. 

district, along with Mr. Cunningham and others, to inti- 
mate in the parishes of the several suspended ministers 
the sentence that had just been pronounced. But before 
this could be done, these ministers had obtained an 
interdict from the Court of Session against the sentence 
being intimated in their parish churches, churchyards, 
or schools. This interdict, though it was held to be unjust 
and oppressive, was without hesitation obeyed ; because 
it related only to the use of premises which were the 
property of the State, and so within the jurisdiction of 
the Civil Court. Accordingly, it was in the open air 
that Mr. Candlish preached at Huntly, and other minis- 
ters in the other parishes, intimating the suspension of 
the ministers, and supplying ordinances to their people. 

Soon afterwards, however, the Court of Session, on 
the application of these ministers, granted an extended 
interdict, forbidding any ministers of the Established 
Church to preach anywhere within these parishes 
without the authority of the legal incumbents. As this 
interdict interfered directly with the purely spiritual 
function of preaching the gospel, it was deliberately 
disregarded ; and the most grave and godly ministers 
of the Church willingly went, at her appointment, to 
dispense the means of grace among the people whose 
ministers had been suspended. Mr. Candlish was not 
sent on this duty till the spring of 1841, when he again 
preached in Huntly, this time in a new place of wor- 
ship that had been built by voluntary contributions. 

This act, though it was in no way different from 
what the evangelical ministers of the Church of Scot- 



PREFACE. XV11 

land had been systematically doing for a year past, was 
made the occasion of depriving him of an appointment 
for which he was highly qualified. By the recommenda- 
tion of a Eoyal Commission, the Government had re- 
solved to institute a Chair of Biblical Criticism in the 
University of Edinburgh ; and Mr. Candlish was nomi- 
nated as its first occupant. The appointment was all but 
completed, when Lord Aberdeen made a violent attack 
upon him in the House of Lords, alleging that he had 
violated the law by preaching at Huntly about a fort- 
night before ; and, in consequence of this, Lord Nor- 
manby, the Home Secretary, cancelled the appointment. 
In his published letter to Lord Normanby on this subject, 
which at the time made a deep impression, Mr. Candlish 
vindicated himself from the charge of breaking the law, 
and pointed out the deep-rooted convictions and high 
principles that were involved in the unhappy conflict 
between the Church and the Civil Courts. 

In the Assembly that followed, he melted and almost 
carried away the whole house by his persuasive and 
pathetic appeal to the Moderate party to acquiesce in 
the passing of the Duke of Argyll's Bill, which would 
have put an end to the conflict. This and other attempts 
at an adjustment proved vain ; and matters went on into 
further complications; till at length, the House of Lords, 
having finally decided the claim of the Church to spirit- 
ual freedom to be illegal, and the Ministry and Parlia- 
ment having declined to give any relief, the ministers 
who supported that claim, 474 in number, among whom 
was Dr. Candlish, separated from the State, and resigned 



XV111 PREFACE. 

their livings in connection with the Scottish Establish- 
ment in May 1843. 

In the various discussions and negotiations that pre- 
ceded this event, as well as in the labours needed for 
building up the Church in her disestablished state, Dr. 
Candlish (who had received the degree of D.D. from 
Princeton College, New Jersey, in 1841) took an active 
and leading part. He made numerous journeys, both 
in Scotland and England, advocating the principles of 
the Free Church, and extending her organisation. He 
took charge, at different times, of various of the schemes 
of the Church, more especially of that for Education, 
having been convener of that committee from 1846 to 
1863. Yet, in the midst of all this public activity, he 
kept up his pulpit and pastoral work, and attached more 
and more closely to him the large and intelligent con- 
gregation of St. George's. 

During the Assembly of 1847, the sudden and 
lamented death of Dr. Chalmers created a vacancy in 
one of the chairs of Theology in the New College ; and 
in August of that year Dr. Candlish was appointed 
Professor by the Commission of Assembly. As he 
had ever a strong conviction of the superior im- 
portance of the training of the Church's future minis- 
ters, compared with the pastorate of any one congre- 
gation; he accepted the appointment, and preached a 
farewell sermon to the people of St. George's. But on 
this occasion, as on the former one, he was providentially 
hindered from exchanging the work of the pastorate for 
that of the college. The congregation of St. George's, 



PREFACE. XIX 

with one heart and voice, had chosen as his successor the 
gifted and pious Alexander Stewart of Cromarty ; but 
before he could be inducted into the charge, his sensitive 
nature had given way under the strain and burden of 
the prospect, and he died November 5, 1847. This sud- 
den stroke made a deep impression on the congregation 
and on Dr. Candlish, who, feeling that his heart was too 
much with his afflicted people to give himself wholly 
to the work of his chair, requested, and was allowed by 
the College Committee, to continue the charge of St. 
George's during the winter, meeting the students only 
once a week for the study of Butler's Analogy. At next 
Assembly, having been led to think that his call to the 
professorial office was not so strong as he had sup- 
posed, he formally resigned the chair, and was restored 
to the ministry of St. George's. 

He continued to lead his people in active Christian 
work ; and besides the home mission work that was 
constantly carried on in the original parish of St. George's, 
the territorial missionary congregations of Fountain- 
bridge (out of which grew the Barclay and Viewforth 
churches) and Eoseburn, were originated, and fostered 
into strength and vigour, under his care. His labours 
in the general administration of the Church's business it 
is not possible even to enumerate here, much less to 
describe. He always took a peculiar and warm interest 
in the more directly spiritual part of the Church's work, 
such as the promotion of vital religion, evangelistic 
labours in our own country, and missions to the Jews 
and heathen abroad. 



XX PREFACE. 

ISTor was he inactive in the field of literature, edify- 
ing the Church of Christ by his popular and practical 
works, and, when necessary, defending in controversy 
her fundamental doctrines. In 1842 he published the 
first volume of his " Contributions towards the exposition 
of the Book of Genesis," afterwards completed in three 
volumes. In 1845 an incidental newspaper correspond- 
ence called forth from him a small volume " On the 
Atonement," which was recast and enlarged in 1861. 
In 1854, being invited to lecture to the London Young 
Men's Christian Association in Exeter Hall, he took the 
occasion to review the teaching of the Eev. F. D. Maurice, 
in his " Theological Essays," then just published ; and he 
issued along with his lecture a detailed " Examination" 
of that work. 

But the accumulated toils of what was virtually 
three lives in one — that of a city minister, of a church 
leader, and of a theological writer — told upon his consti- 
tution ; and, in the spring of 1860, Dr. Candlish had a 
severe illness, by which he was laid aside for several 
months. In the following year, he consented to the 
proposal of his congregation to have the help of a col- 
league ; and the Eev. J. 0. Dykes was inducted in that 
capacity, December 19, 1861, and continued to fill the 
office till 1865, when he resigned his charge on account 
of ill health. 

In 1861 Dr. Candlish occupied the chair of the 
General Assembly ; and in the following year he was 
appointed Principal of the New College, Edinburgh, in 
the room of Dr. Cunningham, who died December 14, 



PEEFACE. XXI 

1861. As head of the College he opened and closed each 
session with an address to the students ; and heard and 
criticised the popular sermons which they are required to 
deliver. When the Cunningham Lectureship was founded, 
Principal Candlish was appointed the first lecturer, and 
delivered his course on the " Fatherhood of God " in 
February and March 1864. The views therein expressed 
he had long held and indicated in many of his sermons, 
such as those printed in the Appendix to the Lectures, 
and in his subsequent volume " On the Sonship and 
Brotherhood of Believers." But they appeared new, and 
even dangerous, to certain zealous defenders of ortho- 
doxy ; and gave rise to a somewhat keen controversy. 
Dr. Candlish's Lectures on the First Epistle of John, 
which were written and preached before the delivery 
of the Cunningham Lectures, though not published till. 
1866, form, as it were, a Biblical illustration and prac- 
tical application of them. 

Meanwhile his health was becoming ever more 
broken and uncertain ; his attacks of illness were more 
frequent and severe ; though his zeal and devotedness 
to the cause of Christ and his Church never flagged. He 
was more especially active and earnest in the negotia- 
tions for union among the unestablished Presbyterian 
churches in Scotland, which were carried on from 1863 
to 1873 ; though unhappily without attaining the great 
object aimed at. In 1871-2 he was laid aside from 
all work, for eleven months, by a severe and exhausting 
illness ; but, in the winter of 1872-3, he was permitted 
again to occupy his pulpit, and preached to his beloved 



XX11 PEEFACE. 

people on most of the Sabbaths of that season. The 
burden, however, of the congregational work had been 
necessarily devolved on the Rev. A. TVhyte, who, since 
his induction as colleague in October 1870, had in every 
way consulted for his comfort and relief, and in whom 
he placed the utmost confidence. 

In the weeks preceding the Assembly his strength 
was much reduced, and the effort that he then made to 
take part in its proceedings was a great strain upon 
him. He preached only twice after it — for the last 
time on the loth of June. The three following months 
he spent at Whitby, returning to Edinburgh in the end 
of September. 

The decline of his strength now became more rapid ; 
and from the 10th of October his medical advisers bes:an 
to fear that he would not rally. "When they told him 
their opinion, he fully realised and calmly faced the 
prospect before him ; and it made no change whatever 
upon him. He gave his last directions with his wonted 
exactness, and with perfect composure ; he was cheerful 
and happy, and took an interest in passing events to the 
last ; he was affectionately mindful of all his friends, 
present and absent, and bade a loving farewell to those of 
them whom he was able to see. He delighted to hear 
his favourite texts and hymns, those most full of Christ ; 
and without either great exaltation or depression, but 
" knowing whom he had believed," he calmly waited for 
the end, and peacefully fell asleep just before midnight 
on Sabbath, October 19th. 

It has been thouoht well to furnish, in this brief 



PREFACE. XX111 

form, the outstanding facts of Dr. Candlish's life. Such 
a biography as many friends have expressed their wish 
to have must necessarily be a work of time and much 
care. Meanwhile it is hoped that the present collection 
of sermons, with this brief biographical sketch, will form 
an acceptable memorial volume. The occasion on 
which the first sermon was preached led to its being 
placed as introductory to the others, which, as taken 
from various periods of his ministry, from its beginning 
in St. Andrew's, Glasgow, to its close, will witness to 
his fidelity to the resolution to know nothing among 
his people but Jesus Christ and him crucified. 



SOWERS AND REAPERS* 

"And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth." 
John iv. 37. 

"When" our Lord, in answer to the invitation of his disciples, 
" Master, eat," says with seeming abruptness, " I have meat to 
eat that ye know not of" (vers. 31, 32), he does not mean 
coldly and rudely to reject their proffered kindness, but 
rather he would turn that kindness to higher and holier 
account than they themselves intended. It was not that 
their care for his bodily necessities was to him impertinent 
or offensive, but that he would engage and interest their care 
in what was to him far more urgent than any supply of his 
temporal necessities, — his finishing the work on which his 
heart was set, and doing the will of him that sent him (ver. 
34). The solicitude which they showed for his personal 
comfort could not but be grateful as a mark of personal 
attachment ; for we know how readily he was touched by. 
even the slightest service sincerely rendered : how he took 
in good part the very least of the common offices of civility 
and friendship. He who gratefully accepted the woman's 
testimony of regard as being all that she could offer (Mark 
xiv. 8), surely did not intend to meet and mock by a cold and 
churlish refusal the affectionate importunity of his followers ; 

* Preached in St. George's Church, Edinburgh, in the afternoon of 
17th August 1834, the first Sabbath after ordination and induction as 
minister of that church and parish. The Rev. Dr. Smyth, of St. 
George's, Glasgow, preached in the forenoon of that Sabbath. 

B 



2 SOWEKS AND KEAPERS. 

who, in their consideration for his comfort, knowing how 
urgently he needed refreshment, prayed him to eat. But, 
as when Martha was careful and troubled about much 
service for his personal accommodation, he thought it neces- 
sary to intimate how much he preferred, above her well- 
meant officiousness of hospitable attention to her guest, her 
sister's devout and dutiful earnestness as she sat at the feet 
of her teacher and her Saviour : so here, without under- 
valuing the sympathy of his disciples as it extended to the 
necessities of his earthly condition, he would claim and 
challenge that very sympathy for the nobler aim of his 
heavenly calling, on which his own desires were more 
intensely fixed ; not that he would have had them to give 
less heed to his wants as man, but more to his work and 
warfare as Son of God. 

For this was their main defect during their attendance upon 
Christ, and before the Spirit showed them the things of Christ. 
Much as they were attached to his person, they felt compara- 
tively but little interest in the design of his ministry. Wit- 
nessing, in the intimacy of daily and familiar converse, all his 
meek and holy graces, experiencing all his tender love, they 
loved their master in return with deepest gratitude and 
warmest friendship. But they understood little of his cha- 
racter as the Anointed of the Lord, — the Saviour of his people 
from their sins. They regarded him with strong affection on 
account of his human excellences, with dark and doubtful 
faith in his divine power and prerogative of salvation. We 
see this spirit in the desponding, yet still faithful, affection 
of the apostle Thomas, when, hearing his Master's determi- 
nation to go up to Jerusalem, there inevitably to fall a 
victim to his enemies, he said to his fellow-disciples, "Let us 
also go, that we may die with him." He had little faith, but 
strong love ; he had no hope beyond his master's death, yet 
he was willing to die along with him. The same spirit 



SOWERS AND REAPERS. 6 

imparts a touching and tender interest to the demeanour of the 
disciples after the death of Jesus. They had seen him perish 
on the cross. They concluded that all was over. Their 
vague expectations of his triumph were disappointed ; their 
pleasing dream of hope was past. Yet still there lingered in 
their breasts a fond regard for one who had been so dear a 
friend. They could not bear to think of him as an impostor. 
They delighted to speak of all his works. And there is much 
of mournful kindliness of feeling in their pathetic expression 
of regret, " We trusted that it had been he which should 
have redeemed Israel" (Luke xxiv. 21). 

Something then of this spirit, even now not uncommon^ 
of earthly attachment to the person of God's minister, com- 
bined with much ignorance and disregard of his ministry,— 
something of this our Lord saw on the present occasion, 
in the affectionate solicitude of his disciples about his 
bodily comfort, as contrasted with their indifference about 
the work in which they found him engaged, the work of 
preaching the gospel of salvation, fulfilling all righteousness, 
and laying the foundation of his spiritual kingdom. This 
work is more important in his esteem than necessary food ; 
" My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish 
his work " (ver. 34). And in this work he would have his 
followers to be as deeply interested as himself. He wo aid 
have them to show their love to his person by their sympathy 
in his work. He calls them, and he calls us, to work along 
with him ; to work in the great spiritual harvest of grace then 
and now going on, preparatory to the coming harvest of 
judgment ; to labour in gathering in the ripe crop of God's 
elect church, a people prepared and made willing in the day 
of his power. He tells them, and he tells us ? of the good 
even now to be done, and of the urgent necessity of doing it, 
— of the many souls ready to be added to the church if we 
will but put forth our hand in faith and prayer to bring them 



4 SOWERS AND REAPERS. 

in. Do not say that months must elapse before the harvest. 
" Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white 
already to harvest " (ver. 35). Then by way of encouragement 
he tells them of a rich reward and sure success in their 
labour : " He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit 
unto life eternal " (ver. 36). And he tells them also of the 
manner of the work, — its distribution among a succession of 
labourers, each preparing for his follower, and each reaping 
the fruit of his predecessor's toil, — " Herein is that saying true, 
One soweth, and another reapeth." 

Now it is this principle of distribution and succession 
among the labourers in the gospel harvest that I propose 
to consider. And as all, both ministers and people, profess 
in their several spheres, if they believe the gospel at all, to 
be labourers in this work, the subject concerns us all. May 
the Lord carry it home to the consciences and hearts of all. 
Let us then, 

I. Attend to the reasonableness of the arrangement accord- 
ing to which, in the labour of the gospel harvest, the winning 
of souls to Christ,, one soweth and another reapeth. And then, 

II, Let us consider the practical import of the maxim. 

I. The reasonableness, the fitness, the propriety of the 
arrangement, may appear from two considerations; — first, its 
correspondence with the constitution of human nature and 
human life ; and secondly; its harmony with the plan of divine 
providence in the dispensation of grace. 

(I.) It accords with the constitution of human nature and 
human life that one should sow and another reap. This, as 
our Lord uses it, is a proverbial saying, a general maxim, 
founded on universal observation, and universally applicable 
in human affairs. The very distinction, the special charac- 
teristic of man as an intelligent and social being, lies in the 
truth of this saying ; for it is by reason of his intellectual and 



SOWERS AND REAPERS. 5 

social capacities that the saying, as regards all human opera- 
tions, is and must be true. It could not, with anything 
like the same propriety, be affirmed of the brutes that perish 
that among them one soweth and another reapeth. They, 
guided by unerring instinct, are perfect in their work at 
once, and each individual is competent to complete its own 
work. And, destitute of the faculties of reason and of 
speech, they cannot improve upon one another's designs 
and doings ; they cannot take up and carry on one another's 
labours ; each must begin anew for itself, and stop just 
where its predecessor stopped. Hence the uniform and 
exquisite perfection of their workmanship on the very first 
attempt ; hence its no greater perfection at the very last. 
Men, however, by the use of understanding and of language, 
can improve themselves, and communicate their improvements 
to one another. And hence the transmission of stores of 
knowledge, and facilities of applying it, through successive 
individuals and generations ; the common stock receiving 
fresh accessions and accumulations as it passes from mind to 
mind, from hand to hand. Each takes up his predecessor's 
half-done work, and uses it as the material of his own. At 
each successive stage some addition is made to the amount 
collected before. One begins what another is to carry on and 
complete. " One soweth and another reapeth." 

It is this which renders the education of the individual 
man possible ; this capacity of reaping what is sown by others, 
easily receiving impressions from without, and turning them to 
account, so as to make them fruitful of new principles. The 
active mind, energetically following out the various impulses 
and influences to which it is exposed, enlarges its resources 
and advances in knowledge and in power. The seed sown 
by intellectual and moral culture to-day is reaped in a large 
increase of intellectual and moral energy to-morrow. And, 
considering how many persons and circumstances have part 



6 SOWERS AND REAPERS. 

in this process of training, each in turn more or less con- 
cerned in carrying the process forward ; through how many 
hands, whether rude or skilful, the pliant and plastic soul 
passes in its progress through this scene of its development ; 
and how these all, as they successively take it up, do some- 
thing towards promoting or modifying its growth ; we may 
well say in regard to the whole of this marvellously compli- 
cated agency, connecting the first bias given, through a long 
series of mutually dependent influences, with the final and 
permanent character impressed ;— " One soweth, and another 
reapeth ; ; ' one begins what another is to carry on and complete ; 
one labours, and another enters into his labour. 

And the same law holds in the progress of society. In 
virtue of our capacities of reason and speech, by which we 
think and receive the thoughts of others, one soweth, and 
another reapeth. And so, in the race as well as in the indi- 
vidual, advance or improvement goes on. This susceptibility 
of advance, we repeat, is the very thing which distinguishes 
from the instinct of the inferior animals the reason of man. 
Instinct is perfect at once ; and therefore not progressive. 
Eeason is far from perfect in the beginning ; but then it is pro- 
gressive. Under the impulse of blind instinct, what is done 
is done unerringly by all individuals and all races, and done 
alike by all; and there all are stationary. Under the guidance 
of reason, individuals and races of men learn by experience, 
and so may be always advancing. The ants who prepare their 
meat in summer, the conies who make their houses in the rocks, 
the locusts who have no king, yet go forth by bands, the spider 
w r ho taketh hold with her hands, — these all are exceeding 
wise (Prov. xxx. 24-28). Their several processes are executed 
in more consummate wisdom than any of the works of man. 
But the wisdom is not their own. It guides them surely, yet 
blindly ; so that, as they never fall short of the specifically 
appointed work, so neither do they go beyond it. The indi- 



SOWERS AND REAPERS. 7 

vidual does not improve upon his first attempt, and the pre- 
sent race is none the better for all the exceeding wisdom of 
its predecessor. But man, as a rational and social being, is 
capable of advance to which scarcely any limits can be assigned. 
Coarse and clumsy as his early essays may be, successive efforts 
give increased facilities. And so, from generation to genera- 
tion, the process of improvement goes always on. 

It is thus that all the noble triumphs of science and art 
which have most signalised our race have been achieved ; by 
the operation of this law of our rational and social nature, one 
soweth, and another reapeth. Barely is any great work begun, 
continued, and ended by the wisdom of the same mind, by the 
might of the same hand. There have been changes or relays 
of workmen, each contributing to bring it to perfection. The 
element of power, discovered by one, has been unfolded by 
another, applied by a third, and improved by a fourth. The 
vast and comprehensive grasp of a commanding intellect 
seizes and embraces a principle ; sound practical sagacity 
takes and betters the hint ; an adventurous spirit makes 
the experiment ; successive observations suggest improve- 
ments ; new difficulties are overcome as they occur ; new 
expedients are resorted to ; till, at last, through many 
different processes, the invention arrives at a maturity, and 
is applied to a thousand uses and purposes, of which the 
original author of the whole never dreamed. But he sowed, 
and others reaped. His attainments became the property of 
others, and a stock on hand for them to trade with. And so 
the intellectual and moral wealth of society is always growing. 
What indeed in this day is our boasted civilization but the 
reaping of what others have sown 1 We stand indebted for 
all its blessings to the men of former generations. For us 
they laboured rather than for themselves ; and we are entered 
into their labours. We are availing ourselves of stores which 
they collected ; using instruments which they devised ; taking 



8 SO WEES AND REAPERS. 

up and carrying on, in hundreds of ways unknown to them, 
the works which they began. Could these mighty intellects, 
these master minds, on the intense lustre of whose glory we 
fix our eyes amazed, see us now, gathering so familiarly and 
so wondrously the fruits of their high thought and toil, they 
would be scarcely less amazed themselves. A school-boy idly 
lounges over the mysteries of Newton's study ; a child com- 
mands the giant power which Watt trembled to evoke : and 
unthinkingly, and almost unconsciously, we turn to account 
the resources they have left as a precious legacy to mankind, 
for transacting our homeliest household avocations, as well as 
for wielding our empire over all the elements. 

And other blessings there are, more precious far than 
the results of science and art, which flow to us according to 
this arrangement ; the blessings of our free constitution, our 
civil rights, our religious privileges. Herein emphatically 
is the saying true; " One soweth, and another reapeth : 
other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours." 
The patrios of other days who sprang up in quick succes- 
sion, each in his turn catching the mantle as it fell, and 
grasping the torch from the hand of his precursor in the 
glorious race, animated by the same spirit, pressing on to 
the same goal, — these all toiled and suffered and died, not for 
themselves alone, but for us. By many sacrifices and at much 
hazard these have laid the foundation of that peace and those 
godly institutions' which we by inheritance enjoy. And shall 
we lightly cast away the hallowed fruits of their undaunted 
zeal 1 ? Shall we tamely renounce the struggle which the} 7 
maintained? — refuse to enter into the labours which they 
have handed down to us? — to carry on their work? — to 
carry out their principles ? and so transmit to our children 
those privileges of our birthright which our fathers have 
transmitted to us ? Such then being the universal law of 
human nature and human life, it is quite according to 



SOWEKS AND REAPERS. \) 

analogy that it should hold good in reference to religion, and 
the progress of the kingdom of God in the soul and in the 
world; — that there too the labour should be distributed 
through a succession of labourers ; all working into one 
another's hands and passing on the task or pleasure of alter- 
nate, sowing and reaping, of sowing and reaping by turns, 
from mind to mind, from generation to generation ; until all 
is finished ; the last seed-time over ; the harvest all gathered 
in ; and the time fully come for him that soweth and him 
that reapeth to rejoice together. 

(II.) But this law is especially to be regarded as being in 
admirable keeping and consistency with the plan of divine 
providence as we have the key to it in the dispensation of 
grace. As a law of nature, it is generally applicable to all 
sorts of schemes conducted among men. As a law- of 
providence, it is more especially applicable to the scheme of 
saving mercy revealed in the gospel. 

1. The very adjustment, so to speak, of that scheme in the 
counsels of the Infinite Mind involves the law. The allotment 
of the several departments of this mighty and mysterious work 
of redemption among the several persons of the Godhead, — is 
it not on this very principle, that one soweth, and another 
reapeth 1 and is it not intended to turn the principle to 
account for the more illustrious exhibition of the divine 
glory in the salvation of a guilty world 1 Why this threefold 
agency 1 this successive transmission of the momentous 
business to be transacted, from the Father to the Son, and 
then from the Father and the Son to the Holy Spirit 1 
The Father commissioning the Son ; the Father and the Son 
commissioning again the Spirit ; and all for the appointing, 
and accomplishing, and applying or carrying forward, of one 
and the self-same work, the salvation of the lost ? Why 
so cumbrous and costly and complicated an arrangement ? 
Why so marvellous a distribution of the parts or offices to be 



10 SOWERS AND REAPERS. 

sustained in this economy, in order to the gracious inter- 
position of the ever-blessed Trinity on man's behalf 1 Why 
might not a simple act of divine power, a simple exercise of 
divine prerogative, at once repair the evil done by the Fall, 
reverse the sentence incurred, and so accomplish on the 
instant the end aimed at ? Why so tedious and complicated 
a process as that of which Scripture unfolds to us the gradual 
fulfilment 1 Why so solemn a consulting and covenanting 
of the Godhead, so express a combination of the love of the 
Father, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the fellowship of 
the Spirit, all tending, and tending through a series and suc- 
cession of operations, to one grand result ; which, as it might 
seem, might have been more easily and promptly achieved 1 
Why, but that through such an arrangement, the wisdom and 
power and holiness and love of God might be made more 
manifest ; so that the work might be more gloriously and 
effectually secured 1 

We see the Father offended, yet still willing, waiting, to 
be gracious ; firm to maintain, in the character of Judge, the 
high authority of his insulted government, of his violated law, 
yet full of tender compassion to transgressors ; inflexible in 
his determination to vindicate holiness and visit sin, yet still 
loving sinners, reluctant to inflict upon them even righteously 
deserved woe, seeking their return and reconciliation to him- 
self. And for the consistent and harmonious adjustment of 
these two ends, for exercising the mercy in which he delights 
without compromising justice, or relaxing that judgment 
which, though his strange, is yet his indispensable work ; 
we see him deputing and delegating the task, which it was 
impossible for man or angel successfully to execute, to the 
Son of his love, the Eternal Word ; committing, as by solemn 
treaty, to him the charge of vindicating the honour of the 
law by his obedience unto death, and assigning as the reward 



SOWERS AND REAPERS. 11 

of his humiliation, the purchase of his pain and the travail 
of his soul, an elect and redeemed seed. 

And now the Son takes up the arduous labour, and proceeds 
to execute the gracious plan. No other sacrifice or offering 
would suffice ; then said he, " Lo, I come ; in the volume of 
the book it is written of me ; I delight to do thy will, God." 
And in the fulness of time he came. He who was in the form 
of God came in the likeness of men. And becoming obedient 
unto death, even the death of the cross, enduring its dark 
agony and all its curse, the hiding of his Father's countenance, 
the doom our sin deserved, he could say of the work given 
him to do, and the bitter cup given him to drink, as he 
bowed his head and gave up the ghost, " It is finished ! " So 
his part is done. 

Another part is yet to do. Another agent comes, to 
execute another office ; the Spirit of truth, whom the Son, 
when he ascended up on high, sends to carry forward his 
own work, to take of what is his and show it to the souls 
of men. The proper office of the Son is discharged when 
by his propitiatory death he has satisfied divine justice, 
and opened the way for the consistent exercise of divine 
mercy and the return of sinners to God. And now the office 
of the Spirit, the sanctifier and the comforter, begins ; that 
office being to make sinners willing to return, to humble the 
pride of natural self-righteousness, to soften the hard heart, 
to charm away the enmity of the carnal mind, and bring 
the victim of devils, meek as a child, clothed and in his right 
mind, to the feet of Jesus ; — the self-convicted rebel to the 
footstool of the Sovereign ; — the relenting prodigal to the 
home and bosom of the Father ! 

Thus the great object is fully accomplished, God, as a just 
God and a Saviour, is glorified. The enemy of God is recon- 
ciled. Sin is condemned while the sinner is converted and 
saved. " the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and 



12 SOWERS AXD REAPERS. 

knowledge of God ! How unsearchable are his judgments, 
and his ways past rinding out ! " And how important, in 
particular, does this principle of the distribution of office or 
labour appear, when we see it illustrating the wisdom and 
power of God in the glorious economy of salvation 1 For 
when, on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit came to do his 
part of the wondrous work, when, in three thousand converted 
souls the fruit of the Father's holy electing love and of the 
Son's righteous redeeming grace began to be visibly gathered 
in, oh ! how emphatically might it then be said ; " Herein 
is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth." 

2. As the work is distributed in the counsels of heaven, 
so is it also in the agency on earth ; for the same end, the 
more glorious and complete illustration of the divine sover- 
eignty and love. For, condescending to employ agents upon 
earth, God employs them so as to demonstrate the neces- 
sity of his own agency, over and above them all. And for 
this end, he so arranges the labours of his servants, that, 
while all execute their several parts, to himself alone shall 
belong the glory of uniting and combining these parts into 
one entire plan. So it is in human affairs, that the compre- 
hensive eye of him who surveys and superintends the manu- 
facture, looks to the one result of the several processes in 
which his busy operatives are successively in their several 
departments engaged ; and takes in as a whole the work, 
in the distinct and separate details of which they are 
exclusively occupied. In the trimming of a vessel, a ship 
for sea, how hard are all hands at work, each in his own 
department, and each apparently unmindful of his neighbour. 
All seems utter disorder and inextricable confusion. Hopes 
are pulled seemingly at random. Sails are promiscuously set 
and shifted. There is a running to and fro upon the decks, 
and a constant ascending and descending by the masts. All 
things are unsettled and out of joint. Many different opera- 



SOWERS AND REAPERS. 16 

tions are going on simultaneously, and as it would seem 
independently. A stranger is fairly bewildered, and 
can scarce believe but that be bas got involved in the 
rout and riot of a mutiny. But an experienced eye sees 
order and unity in the apparent chaos. He sees the 
labours of one subordinated to the labours of another, and 
all working, without much thought of it themselves, for 
one end. He knows how to appreciate the intellect which 
can guide so simply and effectually the various movements of 
so noisy and tumultuous a crew. And he is prepared for the 
graceful courtesy with which, all being adjusted, the stately 
vessel is to sweep on in her majestic course. 

Even so, in some such way, to the "principalities and 
powers in heavenly places may be made known, by the church, 
the manifold wisdom of God" (Eph. iii. 10). We may fancy 
there would be more glory, were God, by some one signal and 
decisive victory, to achieve the triumph of his cause. We see 
not the necessity or the advantage of so many independent and 
detached labourers. And yet, rightly considered, it is the very 
unconscious union and mutual subordination of these labourers, 
in order to one great end, that most strikingly declares the 
wise superintendence of one who causes them all to work to- 
gether for the purpose of establishing his kingdom on the 
earth. One, by God's appointment, soweth ; another, by 
God's blessing, reapeth. Many have been the servants of 
God, at sundry times and in divers manners, all occupied in 
forwarding his work ; and yet the labour of not one of these 
is in itself complete ; it needs to be united to that of the 
rest ; others must enter into the labour to render it at all 
effectual. Who then of them all can say that by his might, 
or by his wisdom, success is ultimately attained % And yet 
each is important in his place ; not one of them can be dis- 
pensed with. Prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, con- 
fessors, all in their several spheres are required, by their 



14 SOWERS AN T D REAPERS. 

prayers and labours and sufferings and blood, to eke out one 
another's imperfections, and carry on one another's plans • the 
Lord overruling all, and by means of all advancing the 
interests of his church. 

How grand, how glorious will this arrangement appear 
when the secret history of the church is unfolded; and it 
is seen how in reference to all its great events, obscure 
and unthought-of saints perhaps have contributed each his 
quota, one sowing and another reaping, and all content 
that God should receive the praise ! Nay, how striking, 
in this view, in the day when the secrets of all hearts are 
revealed, may the history of a single sinner converted, 
a single soul saved, appear ! "We ascribe it now perhaps 
to the agency of some one individual whose word of affec- 
tionate warning was blessed for the working of a salutary 
change. He indeed may have reaped ; but how many may 
have been concerned in sowing the seed and contributing to 
advance the harvest in that soul 1 "Who shall say how many 
counsels of parental love have been addressed to him, long 
forgotten, but then seasonably recalled? how many tears 
have been shed over him'? how many prayers have been 
offered for him 1 ? prayers then heard and answered in the 
day of the Lord's power ! Who shall tell how many plans 
have been laid, how many expedients have been adopted, 
for arresting, awakening, quickening him 1 ? how many acts 
of kindness have been done to him to melt his heart 1 Who 
shall calculate what the value and efficacy of these several 
means may have been as instruments in the Spirit's hands, 
preparatory to conversion and conducive to its permanence 1 
Many may have watched over that one soul ; taken an interest 
in its welfare ; longed and prayed and laboured on its behalf. 
And what reason can be assigned why at the last, the 
critical stage, a slighter touch, it may be, a meaner agency, 
may have proved decisively effectual where other influences 



SOWERS AND REAPERS. 15 

and appliances had seemed to fail 1 Oh ! surely, when Paul 
plants and Apollos waters, and neither Paul nor Apollos 
but another gathers in the ripe grain, it can no longer be 
questioned that it is indeed God who gives the increase ; so 
that one sowing, another watering, and a third reaping, God 
alone giving the increase, he alone is to be glorified ! 

Such then is the reasonableness of the arrangement, or 
the law and principle, in terms of which one soweth, and 
another reapeth ; such its suitableness to the constitution of 
human nature and the divine economy of grace. 

II. In regard to the practical import of the saying, one 
soweth, and another reapeth, it reminds us of the condition 
of the work in which we are called to engage, and of the 
place which properly belongs to us as subordinate agents, 
carrying on and advancing through successive stages what is 
not our work but the work of God. It is therefore, on the 
one hand, an argument of humility, calling us to remember 
how small, how very small, a portion of what is to be done 
is under our charge, and how merely subsidiary our charge of 
that small part, with all its responsibilities, is and must be. 
And it is, on the other hand, an argument of love, of brotherly 
love, inasmuch as it reminds us of our dependence on our 
fellow- workers, and their dependence upon us, we entering 
into their labours, and they into ours, and so establishes a 
bond of union most practical and trustworthy. But more 
particularly, the maxim considers us, first, as sowing what 
others are to reap ; and secondly, as reaping what others 
have sown. These two heads of application are all-important. 

1. We are sowing what others are to reap. And here, let 
it be remembered that the proverb holds true universally ; 
the law is general, applicable to all sorts of work. Whatever 
it may be that we sow, there is great likelihood of others 
reaping. And let us be very sure that every one of us is 



16 SOWERS AND REAPERS. 

sowing seed of some kind or other. What are you sowing % 
Are you sowing to the flesh % And have you no fear that 
God's word may be fulfilled as to you, and that you may 
of the flesh reap corruption? (Gal. vi. 8). Or if, by his 
gracious interposition, you are saved, have you no fear that 
from your sowing, corruption may be reaped by others % 
Alas ! how easily in this way may you become partakers of 
other men's sins ! how often, in mere thoughtlessness, may 
you open a chink and crevice in the flood-gate of corruption, 
small indeed, but yet sufficient to let out a stream that will 
soon be large enough ! Yice and folly need but a beginning, 
and if you set Satan's machinery agoing in a frolic, there are 
plenty of his servants ready to keep it going in right earnest. 
Alas ! how many idle and hasty words are every day uttered, 
how many wayward passions indulged, how many worldly 
practices tolerated, how many little liberties taken and trifling 
inconsistences allowed, all without considering the danger- 
ous precedent others may draw from them and the evil use 
they may make of them. You intend no harm. You do no 
great hurt yourselves. But if you give the hint which others 
are prompt enough to take ; if you point the way where they 
are ready enough to run ; if they improve upon your sugges- 
tion and better your example ; as full many there are on the 
watch and alert to do ; if you sow, however sparingly, what 
they reap more liberally ; oh ! in such a case, what reason 
can you show why you should not share their responsibility, 
why you should not be involved in their blame 1 

Beware then what you sow. Look well to it that it be all 
good, and of a good tendency. And if so, take courage from 
this assurance, that its influence will spread and diffuse itself, 
and what you sow another will be ready to reap. This might 
seem poor encouragement if the work were your own. In 
that case it would be felt to be a hardship that you should 
sow, and another reap, that you should labour, and another 



SO WEBS AND BEAPEES. 17 

enter into your labour. And accordingly, in reference to a 
man's labour for his own accommodation, this is often in 
Scripture denounced as a heavy judgment. Eut the work in 
which you are engaged, the gospel work and labour of love, 
is not your own, but another's, even God's. And instead 
of being offended because it may be often taken out of your 
hands to be carried on and completed by others, you rejoice 
in the sure prospect which this very arrangement affords of 
its being in the end successful. For the proverb is a promise, 
and is to be pleaded as such. The law here stated is the law 
of God's procedure which he is pledged to fulfil. The work 
is his own ; therefore he will raise up workmen. The seed 
is his own, therefore he will raise up reapers. He will not 
suffer it to rot and perish. 

Be this your encouragement, ye Christian parents, who 
have sown good seed in the hearts of your children, and 
laboured to begin a good work there. Are you tempted to 
repine because it is not your privilege yourselves also to reap 
the fruit, and see the work prospering in your hands 1 Yet 
be strong in faith and patience. The work, if it be the work 
of the Lord, — and who shall doubt that it is % — will prosper, 
if not in your hands, in the hands of some other servant of 
the Lord. And is not that assurance enough for you % Ee 
you faithful in doing your part ; and be very sure that God 
will raise up others of congenial mind to enter into your 
labours and do their parts. And God himself, in his own 
good time, will do his own part ; for he does not always see 
it to be meet to put all the responsibility and all the honour 
upon one agent. One soweth, and another reapeth. You 
have laboured ; others may enter into your labour, and carry 
on your work. And in some aftertime, in a time of the out- 
pouring of the Spirit, a time of refreshing and of revival, 
your labour, now as you are apt to fear in vain, may begin to 
appear. The lessons you have taught may be tenderly remem- 

c 



18 SOWERS AND REAPERS. 

bered ; your warnings, your entreaties, your earnest supplica- 
tions, may all be gratefully acknowledged. 

Oh ! what consolation may this view impart to the saint 
and servant of God called away in the early stage of his 
labour, with but little of a visible result to cheer and comfort 
him 1 He has but sown some seed ; he has but entered on 
his field and superficially surveyed its extent ; he has but put 
in order his machinery. Many a favourite scheme he is com- 
pelled to leave unmatured, — many a fair blossom, still how 
tender and precarious ! " Oh ! " he may be tempted to wish, 
or we on his behalf, " oh! that I might be permitted to abide 
by my post a little longer • to remain another year ; to com- 
plete some experiment I have just begun ; to await the issue 
of some effort I have been hopefully making ! " Yes ! but 
if God has work for thee elsewhere, or blessed rest, why 
shouldst thou desire to continue here 1 Is thy presence neces- 
sary for the work on which thy heart is set here 1 Nay, out 
of the very stones God can raise up servants to prosecute his 
work. He can cause the good seed to grow, the good work to 
prosper, without thy agency. His having thus far employed 
thee is matter of pure kindness and great condescension ; 
and why shouldst thou grudge that others should be employed 
too 1 If there is any joy in the success of the labour, why 
not allow others to partake of it 1 Tear not that thou mayest 
thyself be defrauded. " He that reapeth receiveth wages, 
and gathereth fruit unto life eternal f — not, however, to the 
exclusion of him that soweth, but that both may re- 
joice together ; he that soweth and he that reapeth equally 
and alike. 

2. The maxim is addressed to us as reaping what others 
have sowed ; and in that view, it is an argument for instant 
and cheerful diligence. You are not doomed always to 
labour for others ; others have laboured for you. You 
take up the work which they have begun, and gather the 



SOWERS AND REAPERS. 19 

fruits of their toil. Let none, then, say in indolence, 
It is time enough yet ; there are yet four months till the 
harvest ; lift up your eyes and see fields ripe already to 
harvest ! The servants of God are never sent to fields 
quite unsown ; there has always been some forerunner pre- 
paring the way ; there is a people made ready. So it was in 
the case of these Samaritans of whom our Lord spoke. 
Unpromising as their situation was ; ignorant, superstitious, and 
idolatrous as the Jews deemed them ; — there were still 
some remnants of good doctrine preserved among them in 
the hooks of Moses, which disposed many to welcome the 
Messiah of wdioni Moses bore testimony. So it has always 
been. The prophets entered into the labour of the patriarchs ; 
John the Baptist into the labour of the prophets ; Jesus him- 
self into the labour of John ; the apostles and succeeding 
teachers into the labour of Jesus. In the very worst circum- 
stances still there are fields holding out the prospect of a 
ready harvest. Even in the depths of heathen ignorance and 
darkness, God has never left himself without a witness ; 
the primitive, traditional revelation is not quite obliterated • 
there is still some gleam of light that may fit the eye for 
bearing more, some element of good that may be seized and 
turned to account. The veriest wretch that lives, ignorant, 
degraded, hardened, of callous heart and conscience seared, 
sunk in profligacy and crime, has still, in some nook or cranny 
of his soul a chord that you may skilfully touch ; a recollection 
of tenderness that you may awaken ; some long dormant 
sympathy that you may arouse ; some thought of better and 
happier days that may yet be made to sting him to the quick ; 
some sacred impressions wellnigh effaced, that may yet be 
deepened and renewed. 

For us indeed, in these lands and in these days — may we 
not be called to lift up our eyes and see fields white already 
to harvest ? The good and holy men who have gone before 



20 SOWEES AND EEAPEES. 

us in the church, — have they not prepared a rich harvest 
for us 1 Then let us put in the sickle. Let us take up the 
work where they left it. Let us enter into their labour and 
fulfil their joy ! True, many seeds of corruption, many ele- 
ments of evil have been sown through neglect or sin in former 
generations ; and in the church's weakened energy and crippled 
resources we are now reaping their sad fruits. Yes ; but the 
venerable Christian patriarchs of our land are not so long 
gone ; the godly of kindred spirit have not so utterly failed \ but 
that still the church may find many precious seeds of their 
sowing to mature, many fruits of their prayers to reap and 
gather. Then manfully let us enter into their labour, catch 
the spirit of their devoted zeal, and forward the interests of 
the cause so endeared to the best affections of their hearts, so 
indebted to the faithful labour of their hands. 

To this we are called by the reverence and respect we 
have for them. Do we not see them, as it were, bending upon 
us the eye of intense expectancy, — waiting till we take up the 
weapons which they have dropped, and resume the fight which 
they sustained to the last 1 Do we not hear their voice of im- 
ploring earnestness, — " Let not all our tears and prayers be 
lost, and all our efforts frustrated ! Let not the trumpet with 
which we proclaimed the jubilee of a world's salvation, now 
from feeble or unfaithful lips give forth an uncertain sound ! 
Let not sinners whom we warned return again to folly for 
want of seasonable reproof; or the penitent whom we com- 
forted be again discouraged for want of a preached Saviour ; 
or the hungry soul be stinted of the rich supply which we 
were wont to give out of the fulness that is in Christ ! " 

Again we are called by the sure prospect of success. We 
in this generation receive as our portion the wisdom and 
the energy of the men of other days. We have their experi- 
ence to teach us ; their plans to guide us ; the still remaining 
results of their Christian faithfulness as materials to work 



SOWERS AND REAPERS. 21 

with. We start as from an advanced post. We begin with no 
despicable stock of Christian resources on hand, bequeathed 
to us by them. They have done much to facilitate what we 
have yet to do ; removed many obstacles ; and gained a foot- 
ing on which we may securely stand in our attempts to move 
the people. Let us press eagerly on in the way they have left 
comparatively clear for us. 

Lastly, we are called by the hope of rejoicing along 
with them in the results of our joint labour ; one sowing, 
and another reaping ; and both rejoicing together ! What 
a spirit-stirring thought is this ! What an animating 
prospect ! To share in the holy joy of saintly men ! 
their joy in those successful undertakings which they be- 
gan, and it is our privilege to complete ! To be partners 
of their labour now ; to be partners of their triumph here- 
after ! To meet them in the realms above, and take sweet 
counsel with them on what we have together done for the 
glory of God and the good of souls ! To compare notes of 
our several services in the same vineyard of our common 
Lord ! What heart can conceive, what tongue express, the 
untiring rapture of such sympathy and fellowship with the 
noble spirits we have long reverenced and loved 1 What a 
theme of never-ending delight, what a topic of unceasing in- 
terest, to have in common ! And oh ! will not eternity be 
all too short to trace the history of our joint labour ; to adore 
in instances ever fresh in the recital the love and wisdom 
of him in whose cause we have jointly laboured ; to point 
out cases where the seed they thought lost has by God's bless- 
ing in our hands become fruitful, — souls to whom they spoke 
in vain many a word in season brought at last, by our means, 
to remember and to bless these very words ! And in turn to 
find how, in the conversion of many a sinner, and the edifying 
of many a saint, we have been more highly honoured than 
we could ever have dreamt of; having been joined and asso- 



22 SO WEES AND EEAPEES. 

ciated in the work with some venerable father or dear brother 
in the Lord, into whose labours we entered, and whose joy 
in these labours we fulfil and share. 

These, my friends, are thoughts on the present occasion, 
not unsuitable as addressed to you who are to be hearers, and 
very overpowering as they affect him who speaks to you ! 
Called by a short and sudden and most unforeseen course of 
advancement to enter into the labours of the great and good 
men who in this highly-favoured corner of God's vineyard 
have laboured so nobly and so faithfully, — who would not 
be filled with emotions of awe, and well-nigh of terror 1 
Masters in Israel both of them ! The one, of command- 
ing powers all consecrated by noble zeal in the cause of 
God and truth ; the other, of most saintly, spiritual, and 
deep experimental Christianity ! Who but must feel as if 
he were touching the ark with unhallowed hand in entering, 
with the consciousness of much infirmity and many de- 
ficiencies, on a field which even such men found too arduous ! 
Much as there may be, perhaps, in such a call to rouse and 
excite an enthusiastic mind ; alas ! there is far more to dis- 
courage and depress ! And much of your kindly indulgence, 
and much of your sympathy and friendly aid, and full many, 
— oh! let there be many, — of your prayers, earnest and 
affectionate, will he need who now desires to preach to 
you, not himself, but Christ Jesus the Lord ; and himself 
your servant for Jesus' sake ! For his own part, he can but 
plead an honest and hearty desire to enter, with God's help 
and your countenance, into the labours of those who have 
gone before ; to fulfil their plans and purposes of usefulness 
to the Church, and carry on every good work by them auspi- 
ciously begun. Eor this desire alone he asks you to give him 
credit ; and the expression of it he prays you to take in good 
part. And here your co-operation may fitly be expected. 
To occupy the place of such men, whose personal acquaintance 



SOWERS AND REAPERS. 23 

it was not his privilege to enjoy ; — ignorant therefore in great 
measure of their designs and thoughts ; must be felt as a 
serious disadvantage ; — for the diminishing of which, every 
suggestion that can enable him to enter more fully into their 
labours, and especially into the spirit of their labours, cannot 
but be very grateful and very welcome. 

But these, after all, are secondary considerations. The work 
of the ministry is in itself a work of awful responsibility ; and 
none of us is sufficient for it. Therefore, brethren, do ye pray 
for us, that our sufficiency may be of God ! Pray that the 
Spirit of the Lord may be with us in all our private prepara- 
tions, — in all our official duties ! Pray that we may be en- 
abled to be faithful ; to remember the commission with which 
we are charged ; to shun all compromise ; to declare the whole 
counsel of God ; to reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all meekness 
and authority ; to comfort the mourner and speak a word in 
season to him that is weary. Pray that our own heart may 
be richly stored with all divine wisdom and an experimental 
knowledge of the divine love. So shall we be the better able 
to bring forth out of the treasury within the word of life ; 
speaking from the heart to the heart. Pray, above all, that 
the word which we preach to others may be preached with 
divine power to ourselves ; that our professional familiarity 
with the gospel may not hinder its personal application ; that, 
much as we have to speak of the things which belong to 
our peace, we may feel them much more ! Pray for us, 
brethren, oh ! pray for us, that our own work may not con- 
demn us ; that, after having preached to others, we may not 
ourselves be cast away. Amen. 



24 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 



II. 

THE MAN CHEIST JESUS. 

' ; The man Christ Jesus." — 1 Timothy ii. 5. 

There must be some reason for the emphatic use here of the 
word " man," or the expression " the man." It does not 
indeed give any countenance to the opinion that Jesus 
Christ the Mediator is a mere man. On the contrary, it 
suggests a presumption, at least, if not a proof, against that 
opinion. The very isolation of our Lord as " the man ; " the 
stress laid in so studied and marked a way on his manhood ; 
is fitted to convey the impression of his being something else 
and something more than man. And the real explanation 
of the importance which Paul manifestly attaches to his 
humanity, in connection with the subject about which he is 
writing, unequivocally shuts out the use which some cham- 
pions of the doctrine of his mere humanity have been accus- 
tomed to make of this their favourite and often vaunted text. 
The explanation is to be sought and found in the context. 
The apostle is enforcing the duty of intercessory prayer. 
Especially he urges the obligation lying on believers to make 
their intercessory prayers all-embracing, all- comprehensive 
(ver. 1). You are to pray for others. You are to pray for all 
men, without distinction, without respect of persons (ver. 2). 
You are to pray for kings, and for all that are in authority. 
These are singled out and specified for a very obvious cause. 
They may be, they often are, as at the time then present they 
were, the enemies of Christ ; blasphemers of his name ; 



THE MAX CHRIST JESUS. 25 

persecutors of his church. On that, or on other grounds, 
they may seem to be beyond the reach and range of that 
sympathy which ought to prompt and inspire intercessory 
prayer, and without which such prayer can scarcely have any 
sincerity, any earnestness, any warmth of heart. 

To meet this narrow feeling of nature, Paul brings forward 
the large and wide sweep of grace. To pray for all, even for 
those that are most hostile or most alien (ver. 3), is good and 
acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour. It may well be so, 
it must be so. For it is in accordance with his mind and will 
as Saviour. He is our Saviour, it is true ; but not ours only 
(ver 4). He will have all men, — his greatest enemies, the most 
outcast prodigals, not excepted, — he will have all men to be 
saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. If there 
are any for whom we cannot pray directly out of sympathy 
with them, we can pray for them out of sympathy with the 
Lord, who is our Saviour, and who is willing also to be 
theirs. We may have no particular or personal interest in 
them. But we know the interest which the Lord our Saviour 
feels in them. And if we love him as the Lord our Saviour, 
and enter into his heart, and comply with his desire, we will 
pray for them, for all of them, with an intensity proportioned, 
to the measure of our filial likeness in him to our Father in 
heaven. 

All the rather will we pray for them all, when we bear 
in mind that they and we are all one. Yes ! all are one, 
they and we are one ; inasmuch (ver. 5) as there is one God 
for all, one Mediator for all, one Saviour for all. There are 
not many Gods, so that one might belong to one God and 
some to another. There are not many Mediators, many 
Captains of salvation, under whose separate banners men 
might rank themselves at pleasure. There are not many 
ransoms, with blood of various hues to meet varieties of taste 
among the sprinkled worshippers. There is but one God, to 



26 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 

whom all belong. There is but one Mediator, one only 
name under heaven given among men whereby all must be 
saved. There is but one Eansom, one Lamb of God that 
taketh away the sin of the world. 

One God for all. One Mediator for all. One ransom for 
all. And the ransom, the Mediator, Christ Jesus, is " the 
man/' Not a man of a particular colour, whether fair, or 
dark, or of Ethiopian dye. Not a man of a particular race, 
Jew or Gentile ; of Shem, of Japhet, or of Ham. Not a man 
of a particular class or rank, whether of royal ancestry or of 
lineage proper to his birth in the stable Of an inn. Not a 
man of a particular temperament, whether sanguine or morose, 
grave or gay. Not a man of a particular history, walking in 
a path apart. He is "the man Christ Jesus ;" everywhere, 
always, to every one, the same ; the man. Therefore they 
who love him, the man Christ Jesus, may well be exhorted to 
pray for all men. 

" The man Christ Jesus." The very absence of all qualify- 
ing epithets makes the designation unique and solemn. There 
is a majesty about it which inspires awe. There is a grace 
in it which wins trust and love. It is not the holy man, 
the righteous man, the gracious man. It is not the man 
approved of God, who went about doing good. It is not even 
the man of sorrows. It is simply " the man Christ Jesus." 
How much there is in this bare and bald title, may the Spirit 
show us ! 

I. He is the man all through ; out and out the man. 
In soul, body, spirit ; in look, voice, carriage, walk ; in mind, 
heart, feeling, affection ; he is out and out, through and 
through, the man. In him ; — in all about him, all he is, and 
all he does, you see the man ; not the man of honour, the 
man of piety, the man of patience, the man of patriotism, 
the man of philanthropy ; but the man. The manhood in 



THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 27 

Christ Jesus is very noble ; but it is very simple. And 
it is because it is so simple that it is so noble. None who 
knew him while he lived here, let them have known him 
ever so well, would have been inclined, even if they had 
been able, to delineate or draw his character when he was 
gone. The better they knew him, the less would they 
have been inclined to try. None have ever succeeded in 
drawing his character since. For he is the man Christ 
Jesus. Do you ever think of him but just as the man? 
Other men you think of as distinguished by their features. 
Did you ever see a portrait of him that pleased you 1 JSTo ! 
And you never will. For he is the man Christ Jesus. You 
remember other men by their peculiarities of manner. But 
by what peculiarity do you remember the man Christ Jesus 1 
You associate other men in groups, around their favourite 
centres of attraction, their idols of the cave, the tribe, the 
market-place. In which of all the groups do you place the 
man Christ Jesus 1 

Oh ! it is a blessed thing to know that Jesus Christ is 
the man. The man for you, brother, whoever you are ; — and 
the man also, I thank God, for me ! The man for the strong, 
— the man for the weak ! The man for kings ; for what king 
was ever so kingly as the man Christ Jesus 1 The man for 
heroes • for who so heroic as the man Christ Jesus 1 The 
man for you who toil in the carpenter's shop ; in the like 
of which once he toiled, like you, — the man Christ Jesus ! 
The man for you who lie groaning beside that fresh grave ; 
for what heart so tender as the heart of him who wept at 
Bethany, — the man Christ Jesus ! The man for you whose 
sin is ever before you ; for whom did sin ever grieve or vex 
as in the agony of his bloody sweat it wounded, in the 
garden, the man Christ Jesus ! 

II. He is simply man throughout ; in every exigency, 



28 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 

in every trial, simply man — the man Christ Jesus ! In all 
his earthly and human experience, you never find him other 
than man ■ you never find him less than man ; and you never 
find him more than man. That he is more than man, you 
believe and are sure ; for you see his divine works of charity 
and power. You see how he saves others. But from the 
manner in which he fulfils his own obligations, meets his own 
temptations, and bears his own sufferings, you would never 
gather this. Himself he does not save ! Other men, in the 
stern battle of life, often fall far below your standard or ideal 
of genuine manhood ; while occasionally they tower to such 
a height of transcendental and romantic virtue that you feel 
as if they belonged to a higher sphere, a Utopian world. They 
are none of us, you say, no kith or kin of ours. Do you 
ever feel anything like that when you read the story of your 
Lord 1 No. Eor he is the man Christ Jesus ! 

He is the Son of God, you know ; the Father's fellow. 
But you never think of his being the Son of God as making 
his manhood at all different from yours. No ! For you never 
find him taking shelter from the ills to which flesh is heir 
in any power, or privilege, or prerogative of his divine nature 
and heavenly rank. Nor do you ever find him interposing it 
as a shield against the world's cold cruelty and the fiery darts 
of the wicked one. No ! In his war with the great enemy, 
as well as in the whole experience of his life and death, he 
is the man Christ Jesus. And as to all that, he is nothing 
more. He will not feed himself by miracle ; for he is the 
man Christ Jesus ; and lives, as other men live, by the pro- 
vidence of God, by bread, or whatever else God may appoint. 
He will not call down fire to avenge him on his enemies ; for 
he is the man Christ Jesus ; and commits, as every man 
should commit, himself and his cause to God. He will not 
summon from heaven legions of angels for his relief ; for he 
is the man Christ Jesus ; and as the man Christ Jesus he 



THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 29 

says — what every man among you may receive grace to say 
along with him, — " The cup which my Father giveth me, shall 
I not drink it 1 " " Father, not my will, but thine be done ! " 

Thus, as the man Christ Jesus, he lies in his mother's 
bosom, and works at her husband's trade. As the man 
Christ Jesus, he is subject, all his youth, to his parents. 
As the man Christ Jesus, he is weary, hungry, thirsty. As 
the man Christ Jesus, he is vexed, grieved, pained, pro- 
voked. As the man Christ Jesus, his soul is exceeding 
sorrowful, and at times his anger is stirred. As the man 
Christ Jesus, he cries, and groans, and weeps. As the 
man Christ Jesus, he bleeds, and quivers, and dies. All 
throughout, he never once evades pain because he is the Son 
of God. He never once borrows strength to bear pain from 
the fact or consciousness of his being the Son of God ! He 
is fain to cry to God, like other men, and to welcome, like 
other men, the help and comfort of the Holy Spirit ; yes, and 
of holy angels too. Apart from prayer to God, and the aid of 
the Spirit, and the ministry of angels, he has not, any more 
than the feeblest of you all, anything but manhood's feeble- 
ness, in which to toil, in which to travail. Nothing more. 
For he is the man Christ Jesus. 

This also is a blessed thing to know. In all the doings and 
sufferings of our Lord, you, brother, and I, may see what our 
common manhood, simply as manhood, may do and suffer, for 
he is the man Christ Jesus. Man's capacity of attainment, 
man's power of endurance, — what man is fit for, what man 
can stand, with the help of God, you learn from the human 
history of the man Christ Jesus ! Surely it is good to con- 
sider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against 
himself ; who resisted unto blood, striving against sin ; who 
drank the bitter cup and hung on the accursed tree ; and to 
remember always that in all that he was very man ; a real 
man ; the man Christ Jesus. 



30 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 

III. He is the man exclusively, pre-eminently, par ex- 
cellence, to the absolute exclusion of all others, he is the man, 
the only man, complete and perfect. He stands alone as man ; 
the man Christ Jesus. Manhood, in its integrity, belongs to 
him alone. JSot otherwise, my brother sinner, could he be 
the man for you ; the man for me. Let one gather up in 
himself all the fragments of the manhood which you and I 
share together. Let him collect in one heap, as it were, 
every particle of glory and beauty to be found anywhere 
among the ruins of humanity. Let him take every great 
man's quality of greatness, every good man's element of good- 
ness. And out of all the excellences and virtues of all the 
excellent and virtuous who have ever graced the world, and 
of whom the world was not worthy, let him form in himself 
a choice compound ; combining all, ennobling all, harmo- 
nising all. And let him come forth before you and me as the 
man thus made ! 

Would you and I, or either of us, own him as the 
man for us ? Ah, no ! As soon may we seek to recon- 
struct, from the scattered stone and lime, the time-hallowed 
house . of prayer in which we were wont to worship 
reverently, as our fathers worshipped in it before; as soon 
may we try to get the mouldering dust to take again the 
living warmth we used to clasp in our embrace ; as we may 
hope to scrape together the relics of fallen honour and dignity 
still outstanding in our race, and make of them the man we 
want, the man we need, the man for men, the man of men. 
Assuredly this manhood of ours is a structure very noble, 
even in its fallen state. Not in the high places of the field 
merely, and among the deathless names of history, — but deep 
down in the recesses of poverty, ay, and of abject vice and 
crime, — what traces are there of chivalry and generous self- 
sacrifice ; instances that might put the lazy luxury of sheltered 
innocence to shame ! But take the good you find in every one of 



THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 31 

all the world's inmates, — and in none will you not find some 
good, — in the whole together you will find much. I speak 
of good, not in the highest sense of godliness, though even 
that is not wanting, but as men speak of good, in the sense 
of what is virtuous and praiseworthy. Take all the good, of 
all sorts, you can possibly discover in the records of good men 
of all the ages. Mix, compound, combine as you may please, 
you cannot get the man ! For the man to meet my case, and 
satisfy the craving of my soul, — must be no thing of shreds 
and patches ; but complete, perfect, an unbroken round, in 
himself one whole, No composite will do. He must be a 
single and simple unity ; one, like the seamless coat, woven 
from the top throughout. 

Eut humanity, manhood, has never been thus one, in- 
wardly and intensely one, since the fall. Men there have 
been, good and great. But they have been fragmentary; 
a bit of manhood in each ; often a very beautiful bit of 
manhood ; but set, alas ! and often well-nigh lost, in a 
confused, chaotic jumble of inconsistencies and incohe- 
rences ! We cannot, brother, — neither you nor I, — we can- 
not be contented with any of them, even the best. We 
cannot pin our faith, — we cannot fasten our human hearts 
and hopes upon any one of them, or upon all of them 
together. And if any sanguine admirer of humanity, such as 
it is, comes to tell us ; Here is one in whom all the perfec- 
tions that have separately adorned the choicest specimens of 
human nature meet ; and in whom none of their imperfec- 
tions can be traced : we tax our memory ; we survey the 
world about us and around us ; we ransack history ; we sum- 
mon the excellent of the earth ; we winnow them ; we take 
the choice, the best of them. We do our utmost to weed 
out all their evil and frailty ; we concentrate and condense 
into a very quintessence of worthiness all in them that is 
good ; and we say ; This ideal composite personage must be 



32 THE MAN CHEIST JESUS. 

the man whom you commend to us. But no ! He is not the 
man for us. No conglomerate can be our rock. It must be 
primitive and one. We want, we must have, the man ! Not 
the aggregate of men, but the man ! Not an expurgated 
accumulation, a purified heap, of the ruins of the temple ; 
but the temple ! Not humanity's best points, without hu- 
manity's bad points, worked up into a sort of model of 
humanity ; but humanity in its original type, living and one ! 
The man ! we say, the man ! And here is the man ; the 
man Christ Jesus. All manhood is his ; manhood such as 
yours and mine ; but untainted, incorrupt, one and indivisible, 
which yours and mine is not. He is holy, harmless, unde- 
filed j and separate from sinners. He is separate from sin- 
ners. And he is so, not in his conduct and character merely, 
but in his very birth, in his very nature, as man, the man 
Christ Jesus ! He is the man ; the one only perfect man ; 
the perfection, himself alone, of manhood. Not a man made 
up of the most select remains of manhood, among men as 
they have lived since the fall. He is the man, as God origin- 
ally made man ; perfect, absolutely and indivisibly one and 
perfect ; the man Christ Jesus. 

He is indeed thus, in one view, even as to his manhood, 
separate from sinners ; and from us, as sinners ; from all of us 
alike. That, however, is the very secret of his being the man 
for all of us alike. This separation from all of us alike makes 
him common to and for all of us alike. It makes him 
one ; the one whom each and all of us may embrace ; the 
man Christ Jesus ; the one only separate man ! .For if he 
were merely one of us, fallen as we are, and corrupt ; if his 
holy qualities and virtues were merely such as the best of 
ours are ; and if his immaculate freedom from evil were, after 
all, of the same sort as that which good men among us seek, 
by various expedients of self- discipline, painfully and imper- 
fectly to realise ; then he must be, to some extent, one-sided, 



THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 33 

partial, and unequal ; not fitted to be tlie type and model, the 
root and ground, the confidence and hope, of all redeemed 
and restored humanity. He might be the man for you, and 
not for me. There might be features in him commending 
him to your sympathy, which did not take hold of mine. 
The completest man that ever lived among the fallen sons of 
men, — the men of largest manhood, least limited by accidents 
or frailties, the man made, in the most genial and generous 
mould, not for a party, but for mankind, divides after all the 
opinions and affections, the votes and suffrages of his fellows. 
There are those who understand, — and those who simply 
wonder. There are those who sympathise, and those who 
censure, or who stare. There are some whom he charms into 
closest union with himself ; but there are others who can only 
stand aloof; ready to admire, perhaps, but not able to love. 
Nay, even if we could fancy a man more complete still, 
more completely uniting in himself the excellences of all 
other men, and more completely excluding their infirmities 
and faults ; we cannot reach the idea of one who would not 
be more to some than he might be to others ; who might be 
everything to you, and little, if anything at all, to me. 

No ! If we would find one who is to be the man, for me, for 
you, for all ; we must ascend the stream of time, and fetch his 
manhood from beyond the flood, from beyond the fall ! Then, 
in the unbroken image of God, manhood, human nature, the 
very self of man, was truly and indeed one ! Since then 
the manhood among men has been manifold and broken and 
fragmentary. The' man who is to gather up the fragments 
must himself be whole. The man who is to make us, — each 
one of us, — really one, must himself have the primeval one- 
ness as his own ! All men long for, all men look for, all men 
are prompt to welcome, — some one from among the people 
who is to be the head of all. None such can be got among 
those whom the fall has tainted. The only one who can be 

D 



34 THE MAN CHEIST JESUS. 

the head of all, because he can be the same to all, is he who 
takes our human nature, — not as it is now, rent and torn by 
sin, — but as it once was ; one in unbroken, pure, and holy- 
innocence, one in immaculate likeness to the Holy One ! And 
who is this but the man Christ Jesus 1 

Thus it appears — I. that Christ Jesus is the true nian; 
really and thoroughly man ; the common man ; II. that he is 
very man ; simply man ; as to his human nature and ex- 
perience, neither more, nor less, nor other than man ; and 
III. That he is the one man; the only man in whom the 
manhood is unbroken and entire; the man unfallen, and 
therefore unfragmentary. 

Three other observations remain to be noted, bearing on 
the offices he is fitted to discharge, as the man Christ Jesus. 

IY. He is the man to mediate between God and man. To 
be the one mediator, he must be pre-eminently and distinc- 
tively the man ; the representative man ; the one man. The 
man, not only as being the one alone among his human fel- 
lows competent to be their head, gathering up in himself their 
common nature entire and pure ; but as being the one alone 
of all men whom God owns as his fellow, sharing in common 
with him the divine nature, undivided, unalloyed, unchanged. 
If mediation is a reality ; if it is a real transaction outside of 
us ; not an internal process, but the adjustment of an external 
relation, as all Scripture teaches us that it is ; the mediator 
must be a third party, distinct from both the parties between 
whom he mediates. He may and must represent both. But 
he is to be confounded with neither ; he is to be merged in 
neither. 

A man cannot have a mediator within himself ; nor can 
he excogitate or mentally create a mediator out of himself. 
He cannot be his own mediator. Every man is not a mediator ; 
nor is it any man indiscriminately who can be a mediator. Nor 



THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 35 

will an ideal man, springing, as it were, fully grown, from the 
thoughtful head or fond heart, the living ideal outcome and 
expression of those human instincts that are opposed to evil, 
and yearn for good, suffice. No. Not though we give it a 
local habitation and a name ; and call it the man Christ Jesus 
of Nazareth ! If there is to be real and actual mediation 
in the fair and honest sense of the term, the man who is to 
be mediator must be found for me ; not found by me ; least 
of all found by me in myself. He must not be a man elected, 
as it were, or discovered by me, or you, or us, or all men, as 
fitted to be the common impersonation of what is good and 
true in me, in you, in us, in all men. He must be born, not 
from among us, but from above. He must be the man ; not 
by assent or consent on the part of earth merely ; but by the 
decree of heaven ; or rather by the creative act of heaven's 
Lord, doing a new thing on the earth, bringing in anew 
the man, the second Adam ! For he must not only be in 
the highest and fullest sense one with God, the ruling party 
in the mediation. He must so receive his manhood into 
union with his Godhead as to be placed in the position of 
oneness in nature, not with the multitude of ordinary fallen 
men, but with the one original man, the first Adam, before 
he sinned. 

Thus three conditions come together and coalesce as 
identifying the man who is to be the mediator. First, he 
must be the man, not as manhood exists and appears, marred 
and broken, among the children of the fall, but as it was in 
its original oneness and perfection, when man really bore the 
image of his Maker. Secondly, he must be the man, not as 
suggested by men's own instincts and impulses and cravings, 
but as directly chosen, appointed, introduced by God himself. 
And, thirdly, he must be the man, as being, in his wondrous 
person, one with God in the same true and real sense in which 
he is one with men. 



36 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 

All these three conditions meet in the man Christ Jesus. 
And they meet in him as the man who sounded the utmost 
depths of human experience, and in the strength of his pure 
and simple manhood, aided only by prayer and by the Spirit, 
withstood evil, mastered pain, and by suffering overcame 
the wicked one. Truly there is and can be but one 
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. 
The man (1) made, as to his human nature, by special 
miracle, in the unbroken image and likeness of God. The 
man (2) who comes forth from God, bearing his commis- 
sion to negotiate peace. The man (3) who in respect of his 
divine nature, unchanged, unchangeable, is one with God, — 
the Son dwelling evermore in the Father's bosom. The man, 
moreover, who still, in his connection and in all his fellowship 
of life and love with you, here and now, is very man and 
always man ; the man thoroughly, the man throughout ; one 
of you, one with you ; knowing your temptations, himself 
tempted like as you are ; touched with the feeling of your in- 
firmities. Is it not he who is to heal the miserable breach, 
end the long alienation, clear up for ever the sad misunder- 
standing, and bring the Creator and his guilty creature, the 
Father and his lost child, together again in love 1 Is it not 
he, the man Christ Jesus 1 

V. He is the man to give himself a ransom for all. He 
who would do this, — he who would really deliver you by be- 
coming himself your ransom, — must be one who is willing to 
take your place, and be your substitute ; and fulfil all your 
obligations, and meet all your responsibilities. But more than 
that, he must be himself free, under no obligations, under no 
responsibilities of his own. He must be one who owes 
nothing to God on his own account ; no service, or righteous- 
ness, or obedience ; and one also who lies under no penalty 
on his own account ; against whom no charge can be brought. 



THE MAN CHKIST JESUS. 37 

In whom are these qualifications found combined but in 
the man Christ Jesus 1 For his willingness, who can doubt 
it ? " Lo, I come/' he says (Ps. xl. 7). Nor does he say 
this in ignorance of what he is undertaking ; as one of the 
unfallen hosts of heaven, blindly pitying men in their lost 
and ruined state, might be supposed to have said it. He 
sees the end from the beginning : and it is in the full view 
of all the toil and travail it is to cost him that he offers 
himself; " Lo, I come." Nor does he pause, or repent, or 
draw back, when he knows, by actual experience, in his 
human nature, the weight of the burden he has to bear and 
the bitterness of the bloody baptism he has to undergo ; 
when, in the days of his flesh, he makes supplication, with 
strong crying and tears ; praying in an agony, " Let the cup 
pass." It is still, " Lo, I come." " I delight to do thy will." 
"Thy will be done." Such is the willingness of the man 
Christ Jesus to give himself a ransom ; a willingness to be 
accounted for on no other principle than the union and com- 
bination in him of divine and human love ; divine love, 
deep as the heart of his Father and our Father ; human love, 
tender and true as the heart of a very brother. To love us 
with the holiest love of heaven, — to love us with the purest 
love of earth, — is the exclusive property of the man Christ 
Jesus. In that willing love he says, " Lo, I come." 

But willingness alone will not suffice. He who is to be 
your surety, your substitute, your ransom, must be no common 
man. If he is one who, as a mere creature, is made under 
the law, as all intelligent creatures are made under the 
law, he cannot answer for others ; he can but answer for 
himself. Not even if he were the highest of the angelic 
host could he do more. All that he has, or can have, of 
attainment or accomplishment is no more than he is bound 
himself to render to God. Even if his submission to the 
will of God be of the most perfect character, and carried to 



38 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 

the utmost extreme of obedience and endurance of which he 
is capable, or to which he may be called, he must still say, 
" I am an unprofitable servant ; I have done that which it 
was my duty to do." If there is to be an adequate ransom, 
therefore, he who is to give himself for that end must be one 
who, in his own proper person, is no mere creature made 
under the law ; but uncreated, unmade, the Son of God, 
under no obligation on his own account, and free accordingly 
to undertake all obligation on yours. 'Not is it less necessary 
that he should be exempted, in the human nature which he 
assumes, from all the liabilities of those for whom, in that 
nature, he is to be a ransom. He must be one in whose 
manhood there is no stain, and upon whom there lies no 
brand or burden of guilt. Only such a one can voluntarily 
take upon him your responsibility, put himself in your 
place, and bear away from you the blame and punishment 
by bearing it himself for you. 

If the case stands thus, there is little wonder that when 
the question of your redemption is raised, as it were, in hea- 
ven, there should be blank silence and suspense on all sides, 
until a loud, clear voice, issuing from the throne, breaks the 
solemn stillness — " Deliver from going down to the pit, I 
have found a ransom." And hark ! the echoing response ! 
" Even so, Father." Here am I. " Sacrifice and offering 
thou wouldest not." These oblations cannot satisfy justice, 
or expiate guilt. " The blood of bulls and of goats cannot 
take away sin." But " a body hast thou prepared me." " Lo ! 
I come, to do thy will, to take away sin by the sacrifice of 
myself; I who am thy beloved Son ; I, the man Christ Jesus." 

Blessed surely are you who for yourselves acquiesce in this 
wondrous substitution ; adoring its righteousness and its rich 
grace ! Blessed are you who welcome in loving faith him to 
whom the Father points as the man of his right hand, the 
son of man, whom he maketh strong for himself ; the man 



THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 39 

Christ Jesus. And what blessedness to have to go now to 
all men, as you pray for all men, without exception, without 
reserve, and to say to every man, whatever his colour, his 
caste, his condition, above all, whatever his guilt and sin ; 
— " Brother, thou needest a ransom, an infinite ransom, a 
perfect ransom, a ransom sufficient for the cancelling of all 
thy guilt and the perfecting of thy peace with God. No such 
ransom canst thou find in thyself, in me, in any angel. 
But, my brother, God has found it. Brother, behold the 
man ! the man Christ Jesus." 

VI. He is the man to be testified in due time. A testi- 
mony for fitting seasons ; a great truth, to be attested as a 
fact at the right crisis of the world's history, to be ever 
afterwards preached and taught as the source of life to men 
doomed to die, — is this marvellous constitution of the man- 
hood of Christ Jesus ; fitting him for being the one Mediator, 
the one Eansom. It is the testimony for which I am 
ordained a preacher ; an ambassador for Christ. It is the 
testimony for which I am sent among you with a message, a 
proclamation, in due time, at all fitting seasons. It is a 
testimony to all of you, I lift it up as a testimony to all of 
you, this day ; a timely, seasonable testimony, here and now. 
For now is the due time ; now is the fitting season. 

1. It is my ordained and appointed testimony, or rather 
the Lord's by me, to thee, sleeper ; — to thee, doubter ; — 
to thee, whosoever thou art, who art living a godless, unholy 
life ; unrenewed, unreconciled, unsanctified. It is a testi- 
mony in due time to thee ! Due time indeed ! Ah ! it was 
due time for you when this man Christ Jesus, Mediator, 
Eansom, was testified to you, days, years, half a century 
perhaps, long ago ; when in childhood you almost felt as if 
you, like the little ones in Galilee, were clasped in the warm 
embrace of the man Christ Jesus ; when in sorrow, once and 



40 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 

again, you seemed to see the hot tears of sympathy rolling 
down the cheeks of the man Christ Jesus ; when in deep 
conviction of conscience and poignant distress of soul, you 
were fain to listen for a while to accents of mercy trembling 
on the lips of the man Christ Jesus ; when, in an hour of 
spiritual awakening, you were arrested on your way to sin by 
the calm look and word of him who said so seasonably and 
so lovingly to Saul — "Why persecutest thou me ?" the man 
Christ Jesus. It was due time for you then. It was due 
time for you but yesterday, when Paul's preaching made you 
tremble, and you were almost persuaded to be Christ's. Oh ! 
that thou hadst known then, in due time, the things that 
belong to thy peace ! But, blessed be God, brother, it is 
due time for thee still. These things are not yet hid 
from thine eyes. To thee, this day, is again testified, 
presented before thee in word and symbol, for thy believing, 
loving acceptance, the man Christ Jesus. He is my testi- 
mony, or rather, I repeat, the Lord's by me, the Lord's, I 
say, the Spirit's testimony ; for is not the Lord, the Spirit, 
striving with thee? Is not he witnessing in thee 1 ? — in due 
time 1 Yes ; in due time. For, my brother, it may be the 
last time ! the last time thou art to hear any testimony at all 
about the man Christ Jesus, or the last time thou art to hear 
without being hardened. 

2. It is the testimony with which I am charged to thee 
also, downcast soul, who art afflicted, tossed with tempest 
and not comforted, sin-laden, sorrow-laden, unable to see thy 
warrant for having peace and life with thy God. I testify to 
thee, the Lord testifies by me to thee, that all thou needest is 
in the man Christ Jesus, the Mediator, the Eansom ; and in 
him for thee. All that is Christ's is thine, freely, unre- 
servedly thine. When ] thou criest. Oh ! tell me when 1 
In due time, I reply. But what time is that ? How long 
have I to wait in darkness for light, in sickness for health, 



THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 41 

in weakness for strength, in bondage for freedom, in straits 
for enlargement, in death, for life 1 How long have I to wait ? 
Wait, brother ! But art thou willing to wait 1 Art thou 
waiting 1 Then, brother, hear the testimony. The time for 
favour, the set time, is come. " I have heard thee in a time 
accepted, and in a day of salvation have I succoured thee. 
Behold, now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." 

3. It is a timely, seasonable testimony to thee also, man 
of God, my son Timothy, child of God, who hast quiet peace 
in believing, and art 1 walking at liberty, having respect to all 
God's commandments. The testimony to thee this day is of the 
man Christ Jesus, the Mediator, the Ransom. And it is for 
every due time, every fitting season. Ah ! is there in your 
Christian life any time that is not a due time, — any season 
that is not a fitting season for this testimony 1 for the man 
Christ Jesus, the Mediator, the Eansom, being testified, 
through the Spirit, in thee, and by thee 1 What are all thy 
days and occasions, all thine exigencies and trials, all thine 
opportunities, all thy experiences, of whatever sort ; but each 
and all of them fitting seasons, due times, for this testimony 
concerning the man Christ Jesus being accepted, inwardly 
realised, and openly exhibited 1 

For thyself, I urge thy recognition always of him of whom 
I testify, the man Christ Jesus. For, whatever the time, 
whatever the season, it is a due time, a fitting season, for his 
being testified to thee, by the Spirit, as being present with 
thee. As thou walkest the streets, or journey est along the 
road, he talks with thee by the way, and opens to thee the 
Scriptures concerning himself; the man Christ Jesus, who 
taught thus of old in Galilee and Jewry, speaking as never 
man spoke. As thou sittest at meat, he breaks bread with 
thee, the man Christ Jesus, in whose living, personal, human 
and divine fellowship, the first disciples at Jerusalem did eat 
their meat with gladness and singleness of heart. As thou 



42 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 

visitest the fatherless and widows in their affliction, he goes 
with thee, the man Christ Jesus, who in all their affliction 
is himself afflicted. As thou art wearied among the workers 
of iniquity whom thou art seeking to turn to righteousness, 
ready to complain, " Who hath believed our report 1 " — 
see, ever near thee, at thy side, the man Christ Jesus, 
who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, 
and whose prayer on the cross was, " Father, forgive them, 
for they know not what they do ! " my friends, apprehend 
thus always, everywhere, as testified in due time and 
fitting season to be present with you, testified by the 
Holy Ghost taking of what is his and showing it to you, 
the man Christ Jesus. Apprehend this especially in holy 
ordinances ; in the blessed communion of the Supper. And 
be not slow or slack, as being yourselves also testifiers, 
witnesses, apostles, preachers, to testify to each and all of 
those with whom you come in contact, and for each and all of 
whom you pray, to testify in due time ; — to-day, for you 
know not if you shall have any other fitting season ; — to 
testify to all, as you pray for all, concerning the man who is 
a " hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, 
as rivers of waters in a dry place, as the shadow of a great 
rock in a weary land ;" — the man Christ Jesus. 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 43 



III. 

THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHEIST. 

' ' But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through 
his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simpli- 
city that is in Christ. " — 2 Corinthians xi. 3. 

The simplicity that is in Christ stands here contrasted with 
the subtilty of the serpent : and the instance given of the 
serpent's subtilty in his beguiling Eve illustrates what is 
meant by the simplicity which is opposed to it. In that first 
temptation, all on the part of God was abundantly simple ; 
the command, not to eat of the tree, with the warning, " In the 
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," was, in fact, 
simplicity itself. On the other hand, the subtilty of the 
tempter is apparent in the complex and manifold pleading 
which he holds with Eve. God has but one argument against 
eating ; Satan has many for it ; and there is no surer sign of 
subtilty than the giving of many reasons for what a single good 
one would better justify and explain. The apologist, conscious 
of a weak and indefensible case, usually has recourse to the 
multiplying of excuses, often enough irrelevant and incon- 
sistent, as if the heaping of a number of weak explanations 
upon one another could make up for the impotency and insuf- 
ficiency of each one of them apart. And the tempter also 
avails himself of the same artifice. He does not appeal to a 
single motive or depend on a single plea for success. He pre- 
vails by the variety rather than the strength of his weapons, 
as if he must first confound, before he can conquer, his vie- 



44 THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IX CHRIST. 

tim. First self-love and self-confidence are appealed to ; sus- 
picion is awakened ; and discontent begins to rankle within. 
" Yea, hath. God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the 
garden ?" Then, to lull asleep the just fear of God's wrath, 
as well as to mar the full love of his goodness, the specious in- 
sinuation comes in, " Ye shall not surely die." And to perplex 
the matter still more, obscure and ambiguous hints are thrown 
out as to the possible or probable issue of events, and the 
mind is cast loose on a vague calculation of chances and con- 
sequences : " Ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil." 
Thus complicated is the subtilty of the serpent ; his lies, 
because they are lies, must be multiplied, to prop up one 
another. But truth is one ; and as there is nothing but 
truth, so there is nothing, and there can be nothing, but 
simplicity, in Christ : simplicity, as opposed to subtilty, is 
the characteristic feature of Christ himself, and of all that 
is his. 

The simplicity that is in Christ ! It is a precious and 
blessed quality ; and it may be discerned all throughout 
his great salvation ; in every stage and department of that 
salvation. 

I. In his own finished work of righteousness and atone- 
ment. 

II. In the free offer of the Gospel founded thereupon. 

III. In the fulness of believers as divinely one with 
himself. 

IV. In their following of him as their captain and 
example ; and 

V. In their expectation of him as their judge and reward, 
— in all these five instances of his grace, on the one hand, and 
of your experience and hope, as his people, on the other, this 
distinguishing element may be noted, — and in contrast with 
the subtilty of the serpent, we may trace the simplicity that 
is in Christ. 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHEIST. 45 

I. There is simplicity in Christ, as the Lord our righteous- 
ness, as the servant of the Father, and the substitute, 
surety, and saviour of the guilty. It was in this character 
that he came into the world : and with entire simplicity did 
he sustain it. It was the single object for which he lived 
and died. Indeed, without an apprehension of this leading 
aim, the Lord's ministry on earth is unintelligible, self-con- 
tradictory, and, as we might almost say, marked not by sim- 
plicity, but by manifold subtilty. Every theory that has been 
or can be proposed of the suffering life and cruel death of 
Jesus, the Holy One of God, apart from the recognition of his 
vicarious character and standing, fails, and must fail, to satisfy 
a simple mind. The whole story is a confused, inconsistent, 
inextricable, incomprehensible enigma ; a dark riddle, as re- 
gards the government of God ; a strange anomaly that shocks 
the moral sentiments of men. It is the doctrine, or rather 
the fact, of his substitution for you, which alone harmonises 
and hallows all. On any other supposition, the evangelical 
records are as void of clear meaning as any complicated tale 
of romantic fiction. At the very best, they are vague anec- 
dotes and reminiscences of a remarkable person, of whose 
conduct and fate no intelligible solution can be imagined. It 
is the atonement that gives significancy and unity to the 
whole. Let him be owned as the righteousness of God, in 
your stead, and the propitiation for your sins, what simplicity 
is there in Christ ! Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh 
away the sin of the world ! 

That there is no mystery here, — nothing that transcends 
man's finite understanding, and baffles his restless curiosity, — 
we are far from saying. The substitution of that Holy One 
in the room of the guilty must ever be a wonder on earth, in 
heaven, and in hell. But oh ! is there not a simplicity in it 
that comes home to the heart of a poor despairing sinner 1 
He lies bitten by the deadly fiery serpent, stung with remorse 



46 THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 

for sin, racked and tortured with the fear of eternal woe. 
Behold the serpent lifted up in the wilderness ! Behold the 
Son of man, made sin, made a curse, for such precisely he is, 
for the lost world of which he is a most miserable portion, 
for sinners, of whom he is chief : behold this Jesus, living, 
dying, lifted up upon the cross, taking the place, doing the 
work, bearing the doom, of the condemned victims of everlast- 
ing justice ; — what simplicity as well as worthiness in the Lamb 
that was slain ! How clear, how definite and precise, how plain 
and unequivocal is this marvellous transaction, this real atone- 
ment for sin ! " Deliver from going down to the pit : I have 
found a ransom." " Awake, sword, against my shepherd, 
against the man that is my fellow." Let the prisoner go 
free ; let the guilty criminal be acquitted, justified, accepted ; 
for an infinitely worthy substitute has been provided, to 
undertake all his responsibilities, to meet all his obligations, 
to answer every charge in law against him, every demand 
in justice upon him, to plead for him in the trial, to stand 
for him in the judgment. 

Alas ! that this simplicity that is in Christ should ever 
fail to satisfy. Nay, that it should so often — this very sim- 
plicity — be the very offence of the cross itself ! But it is the 
policy of Satan to mar it, and by his subtilty to corrupt your 
minds from its simplicity, from the simplicity that is in 
Christ, and him crucified. Hence the endless questions he 
has contrived to raise in connection with it, respecting the 
secret counsels of the divine mind, the abstract principles 
of the divine government, and other the like great matters 
and things too high for us ; as if it were our part to care for 
God, rather than for ourselves, in this transaction, — to be 
more anxious about his interests and concerns than about our 
own, — to view the cross, in short, rather in its possible 
bearing on the unknown arrangements of heaven, than in its 
actual application to the wants and woes that press so sorely 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 47 

on the sinner here on earth. Tor it is a great thing for the 
enemy to have this whole affair transferred from the region 
of reality to the region of speculation ; and hence, taking 
advantage, not unfrequently, of the ingenuity even of wise 
and holy men, he tempts them to embarrass the simple fact 
on which the Gospel rests, with sundry more than doubtful 
disputations on the philosophy or rationale of it. 

It is indeed a noble exercise of mind to aim at seeing how 
God in his glorious majesty, as well as we in our miserable 
need, may stand related to the events of Bethlehem, Geth- 
semane, and Calvary ; nor is the inquiry an unprofitable or 
unlawful one. The doctrine of the Atonement is a most 
reasonable doctrine ; and to the understanding, spiritually 
enlightened, it opens up the largest views of God's character 
and ways, while it inspires the lowliest sense of the exceeding 
sinfulness of our sin. But it is still not to the wise and 
prudent, but to babes, that these things are revealed ; and as 
the Lord's new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the 
word, so do they delight in the simplicity that is in Christ. 
Ah ! it is first as a fact, as an actual substitution of himself 
in their room, that they, as sinners, come to know the Saviour's 
cross, and it is through their acquaintance with redemption, 
as a real and literal transaction of awful import between 
the righteous Father and his eternal Son on their behalf, 
that they come, by means of that transaction, to have a 
blessed and rapturous insight into the very mind and heart 
of the Godhead, to perceive that God is light, to feel that 
God is love. 

For subtle intellects, however, the snare of Satan's 
subtilty is often too seductive. Tempted to look on this 
great sight from a divine, rather than a human point of 
view, approaching it, as it were, from the side of "God's high 
throne, rather than from the abyss of fallen man's misery and 
guilt, they seem to consult for God rather than for them- 



48 THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 

selves, to settle beforehand how God ought to act, rather than 
believe what he tells as to how he has acted. And so they 
frame a theory of atonement and redemption accommodated 
to their own ideas of what the general government of God 
must be. They speak vaguely of his public justice as the 
ruler of the universe, rather than of his private justice in his 
controversy individually with themselves. They profess to 
determine what the ends of his universal administration 
demand, rather than what every sin deserves. They find 
manifold good and plausible reasons of state, so to speak, 
on the part of God, for the atonement, instead of one 
sad reason of necessity on the part of the sinner. And 
thus it ends in their representing the plan of redemption, 
with a sort of undefined, abstract, and impersonal generality 
of statement, as an expedient for meeting an exigency, 
or getting over a difficulty, in the divine government, 
harmonising certain opposite claims and considerations, and 
enabling God to show himself good as well as holy, 
gracious as well as just ; and all this, with a studied avoid- 
ing of anything like the precise idea of a strictly real and 
literal substitution of Christ personally in the stead of the 
sinner personally ; as if, after all, the cross of Calvary were a 
kind of stroke of policy in heaven's cabinet and heaven's 
councils, a pageant, a spectacle, an exhibition merely, and 
not that dread reality which made all hell tremble and 
all heaven rejoice, as, in the very act of pouring out his soul 
an offering for sin, the Lord addressed himself to one of those 
whose place he was then occupying, whose guilt he was then 
expiating, whose release he was then purchasing — "To-day 
shalt thou be with me in Paradise." 

my friends, let not your minds be corrupted from the 
simplicity that is in Christ. Others may be careful and 
troubled about the many reasons that may be found in the 
principles of God's high government, to explain and account 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 49 

for the atonement ; but for you, one reason is all that is 
needed, — one good reason, — alas ! too good, — that you have 
sinned, that without shedding of blood there is no remission, 
that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin, 
that the blood of Christ his Son cleanseth from all sin. Yes ! 
" He has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin ; that 
we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. 
v. 21). 

II. As in his own finished work of righteousness and 
atonement, so in the free offer of the gospel as connected with 
it, we may see, and seeing, we may bless God for the sim- 
plicity that is in Christ. How simple, in every view of it, is 
the Gospel message ! How simple in its freeness. " Ho, 
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that 
hath no money : come ye, buy and eat ; yea, come, buy wine 
and milk without money, and without price" (Isa. lv. 1). 
"The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that 
heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And 
whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Eev. 
xxii. 17). How near does it bring Christ! "It is not in 
heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to 
heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it 1 
Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who 
shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we 
may hear it, and do it? But the word is very nigh unto 
thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou may est do it" 
(Deut. xxx. 12-14). "The righteousness which is of faith 
speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall 
ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above :) 
or, Who shall descend into the deep 1 (that is, to bring up 
Christ again from the dead). But what saith it 1 The word 
is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart : that is, 
the word of faith which we preach ; that if thou shalt con- 

E 



50 THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 

fess with, thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in 
thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou 
shalt be saved" (Eom. x. 6-9). How very plain* as well 
as pathetic is the Lord's pleading with sinners ! " As though 
God did beseech you by us : we pray you in Christ's stead, be 
ye reconciled to God" (2 Cor. v. 20). " Come now, and let 
us reason together, saith the Lord : Though your sins be as 
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; though they be red 
like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isa. i. 18). How 
explicit, how unequivocal, are his assurances ! " Turn ye, turn 
ye, why will ye die ? I have no pleasure in the death of 
him that dieth, saith the Lord God : wherefore turn your- 
selves, and live ye" (Ezek. xviii. 32). "As I live, saith the 
Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked ; but 
that the wicked turn from his way and live : turn ye, turn ye 
from your evil ways ; for why will ye die, house of Israel 1" 
(Ezek. xxxiii. 11). " Him that cometh unto me, I will in no 
wise cast out" (John vi. 37). How clear, how undeni- 
ably palpable and peremptory, as it might seem beyond its 
being possible for any sophistry to torture it, is the de- 
claration of the Lord's will that all men should be saved 
and should come to the knowledge of the truth, and his 
command that all men everywhere should repent. 

Yet, need I say to you, my friends, that it is here very 
especially that Satan puts forth all his subtilty to beguile 1 You 
are not ignorant, I am persuaded, of his devices. You know how 
many reasons for doubt and unbelief he can contrive to set 
up against God's one reason for believing. Here am I — a lost 
sinner. There is Christ, a living Saviour. I am commanded 
to believe ; and if I believe not, I perish. But here is a test. 
Is there ever any one of all his reasons that is not founded on 
a perhaps 1 It was upon a perhaps that he persuaded his 
poor beguiled victims at first to risk their paradise, their 
souls, their all ; ye shall not surely die ! And it is by a per- 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHEIST. 51 

haps still, or by many a perhaps, that he would beguile 
poor sinners, to keep them away from Christ. Thus, as 
to the Father : it may be that you are not elected ; that 
your name may not be in the book of life; or as to the 
Son : Christ died only for his sheep, and you may not be one 
of them. Or again as to the Holy Ghost : as you may 
not be an object of the electing love of the Father, and the 
saving work of the Son, so you may not be a subject of the 
converting grace of the Spirit. You may have committed the 
unpardonable sin ; you may have persevered in sin so long as 
to be beyond the reach of renewal and repentance ; you may 
have offended God beyond the hope of his being ever ap- 
peased j or crucified the Son of God afresh, and put yourself 
out of the range of his sacrifice ; or quenched the Spirit be- 
yond hope of any revival : your sin may be so heinous, your 
backsliding so inexcusable, your hardness of heart so great, 
that though all other sinners might find mercy, there may be 
none for you. Or, yet once more, as to the supposed con- 
ditions of your being saved : perhaps you are not convinced 
enough of your sin, or sorry enough for it ; or perhaps you 
are not repenting aright, or not believing aright, or not seek- 
ing and praying aright \ or you may not be willing enough, 
or you may not be able enough, or you may not have know-, 
ledge enough, or faith enough, or love enough, and so on ; 
with may-bes and perJiapses heaped on one another, Satan, 
playing into your own natural fears and feelings, would keep 
you hesitating and halting, balancing scruples and weighing 
doubts for ever. • 

But it is upon no may-be, upon no perhaps, that the 
blessed Lord invites you to commit your soul to him. He 
does not multiply uncertain reasonings and pleadings. He 
has but one word to you. And that word is true. He has 
confirmed it by an oath. "As I live, saith the Lord, I have 
no pleasure in the death of him that dieth ." He has sworn 



52 THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 

by himself, " I, even I, am he." " Look unto me and be ye 
saved, all the ends of the earth." He has but one voice, the 
voice of tender entreaty, Turn ye, turn ye. He has but one 
argument, the argument of the cross, a full atonement made 
for guilt of deepest dye, an everlasting righteousness brought 
in, a sufficient satisfaction made to the righteous law, and a 
welcome, without upbraiding and without reserve, awaiting 
tbe very chief of sinners. 

my friends, let no subtilty of Satan ever beguile you, 
or corrupt your minds from the simplicity that is in Christ, 
in his gospel offer of a free, a full, a present salvation. And 
be not careful to answer Satan's manifold subtilty ; be content 
to set over against it the simplicity that is in Christ. Ah ! 
there is nothing Satan likes better than to draw you into 
argument and debate ; he would fain entangle you in his web 
of sophistry, by getting you to take up and discuss his 
specious reasonings in detail. 

Thou poor soul, scarce escaped out of his net, thou knowest 
these wiles of the devil. It was in many meshes he tried to 
involve thee ; it was by many ties be tried to bind thee ; and 
while thou wast painfully seeking to unravel each miserable 
thread, to unloose each small and cunning knot, how did be 
keep tliee fluttering and vainly panting to be free. 

And oh ! the first glimpse thou didst get of the simplicity 
that is in Christ ! the first apprehension, the first taste, of the 
free, the simple, the unencumbered Gospel of the grace of 
God ! What a relief ! What a release ! The scales fell from 
thine eyes ! Like Samson awaking, thou didst tear off from 
thy limbs ten thousand chains of Satan's lying sophistry, as, 
with a sovereign pardon in thy hand thou didst walk forth 
out of thy prison, erect now and bold — in the broad light of 
God's reconciled countenance. It was then that bya single word 
of power and peace — " Come unto me" — " It is I" — " Thy sins 
be forgiven thee," — thy Lord dissipated the entire host of thy 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 53 

spiritual enemies ; and the new glad song of liberty he put 
into your lips was, " Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given 
us as a prey to their teeth ! Our soul is escaped as a bird out 
of the snare of the fowlers ; the snare is broken, and we are 



III. As there is the simplicity of actual reality in the 
great Atonement, and the simplicity of earnest sincerity in 
the gospel offer, so in respect also of the completeness of 
believers as one with Jesus, we may note the simplicity that 
is in Christ. Here we speak to you in the language of the 
apostle, as espoused to Christ ; presented to him as a chaste 
virgin to a loving husband ; and we would be jealous over 
you with a godly jealousy ; for duplicity now on your part 
towards him is nothing short of spiritual adultery, and is sadly 
inconsistent with the simplicity that is in Christ towards you. 
And what, the apostle adds (ver. 4), would you have 1 Would 
you have one to come to you with another Jesus to preach to 
you, another Spirit for you to receive, another Gospel for you 
to accept ? Are ye so soon weary of the homely fare of the 
Lord's kingdom that ye would look out for new and foreign 
dainties 1 Are your minds corrupted from the simplicity of 
Christ 1 Alas ! it is to be feared that the serpent who 
beguiled Eve through his subtilty, has been busy with your 
minds too. He contrived to make her dissatisfied even with 
the simplicity of Paradise. Is he making you, in like 
manner, dissatisfied with the simplicity that is in Christ ? 

Call to mind here, my friends, the circumstances of our 
first parents, and the subtilty of Satan in that first temptation 
that beguiled them. In the garden of Eden they had all 
things richly to enjoy. Of every tree of the garden they 
might freely eat. It was a simple grant of all the happiness 
of which their pure nature was susceptible that was made to 
them by their bountiful Creator. But the very simplicity of 



54 THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 

the grant was a stumbling-block to them. The single test of 
their loyalty, — in itself simple enough too, — became irksome. 
Satan had a more excellent way. He would improve upon 
the divine method of Eden's holy joys, and make their 
position yet more perfect and more free. "Ye shall be as 
gods, knowing good and evil." It was a subtle snare. Ye are 
treated now as children ; your innocence is the innocence of 
ignorance, and ignorance, too, is all your bliss. Ee knowing ; 
and be as gods. 

So the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, causing 
her to be discontented with the simple profusion of Eden's 
blessings and the simple tenure on which she held them. 
And the like spirit of discontent he would fain cherish in 
you in regard to the simplicity that is in Christ. Of that 
simplicity you that are in Christ have some experience. It 
is the simplicity of a rich and royal liberality, alike in his 
gifts and in his manner of giving. How simple, in every 
view of it, is his treatment of you, my brethren that are his, 
— you that are in him. " Ye are complete in him." " All things 
are yours." All that he has is yours. The perfection of his 
righteousness, the fulness of his grace and truth, the holiness 
of his divine nature, the riches of his divine glory, his blessed 
relation of sonship to the Eather, the unction of the Holy 
Ghost wherewith he was anointed, the love with which the 
Eather hath loved him, the reward with which the Eather 
hath crowned him, all his possessions, in short, and all the 
pure elements of his own inmost satisfaction, his rest, his 
peace, his joy, all, all he shares with you, simply, bountifully, 
unreservedly; and all upon the simple footing of your only 
being in him and abiding in him. 

What simplicity is this ! And yet, my friends, you may 
be tempted to weary of it. Even Paradise itself began to 
grow tame and insipid. The even tenor of its peaceful and 
placid way, the noiseless unbroken current of its smooth 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 55 

waters of delight, was felt to be dull and slow ; and its 
inmates became impatient for a change. They disliked the 
level uniformity of mere creature innocency, and the humility 
of prolonged dependence on their most beneficent Creator. 
They would take a shorter and more summary road to per- 
fection, they would be as gods themselves, knowing good 
and evil. Is there never anything like this, my friends, 
in your spiritual experience? Are there never seasons 
when the whole ordinary routine of your wonted spiri- 
tual exercises seems weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 1 Is 
it a time of heaviness with you ? of falling away from your 
first love ? of collapse after excitement 1 of dulness after 
ecstasy, and listless languor following upon some agitating or 
exhilarating crisis in your history 1 Who shall prescribe for 
such a spiritual malady 1 What can we say to you that will 
not fall as a thrice-told tale upon your ear? To tell you 
again merely of Christ, to rehearse the old story of his suf- 
ferings and death, to assure you over and over of the suffi- 
ciency of his atonement, the freeness of his gospel, the pro- 
mise of his Spirit, — to speak to you still of nothing but the 
efficacy of faith, and the power of prayer, and the consolation 
of the word, and the lowly duty of simple waiting on the 
Lord, that he may renew your soul, — all this is but to charm 
ache with air and agony with words, to patch grief with 
proverbs. It is all true, you say, incontrovertibly true : 
you know it all and you believe it all ; and yet you feel 
wretched, and dull, and dead. Is there no more sovereign 
specific for ministering to a mind diseased ? Is there no 
fresh expedient for reawakening the dormant feelings of the 
heart 1 Is there no royal road to a holier and happier 
state ? 

Alas ! my friends, yours is the very frame of mind for 
Satan's subtlest policy to work on. To you he comes as an 
angel of light ! proposing some specious novelties in doctrine, 



56 THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHEIST. . 

refinements upon the commonplace threadbare preaching of 
the cross ; or suggesting new modes of worship or of fellow- 
ship, expedients for improving upon the ordinary means of 
growth in grace and progress in holiness. It is the frame of 
mind with which heresiarchs of all sorts, whether cold and 
calculating, or warm and enthusiastic, know well how to deal. 
Let church history, modern as well as ancient, testify ! At 
such seasons, brethren, be ye especially on your guard ! Seek 
not relief impatiently by devices of your own or of others 
who may plausibly profess to pity you. Wait on the Lord. 
Stand on the old paths. Let his word still be your stay; 
continue in prayer, and faint not. Wait, I say, on the Lord. 
" It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for 
the salvation of the Lord." " Weeping may endure for a 
night, but joy cometh in the morning." Abide still in Christ. 
Look to him as at the first. Deal with him as a poor, empty 
soul, with a rich, full, loving Saviour. Go not elsewhere, but 
only to Christ. All things around you change. All within 
you changes. But keep on trusting in him. Though he slay 
me, he is the same. " Who is among you that feareth the 
Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in 
darkness, and hath no light 1 Let him trust in the name of 
the Lord, and stay upon his God." Let him not kindle a fire 
of his own, or walk in the sparks men may kindle. Let him 
still wait on the Lord, who will cause light to arise. 

IY. Great and manifest as is the simplicity that is in 
Christ your Lord, in his work of righteousness and atone- 
ment for you, in the free offer of his gospel to you, and in 
his uniting you to himself, and associating you with himself 
in all that is his ; it is not less apparent in his guidance of 
you, as your captain and example. I will guide thee, says 
the Lord to the happy man whose iniquity is forgiven, whose 
sin is not imputed, and in whose spirit there is no guile, — I 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 57 

will guide thee with mine eye (Ps. xxxii. 9) : — a manner of 
guiding peculiarly and pre-eminently simple. It is opposed 
to the use of mere brute force, or the mere compulsion of 
threatening and terror, the hit, the bridle, the uplifted rod, 
the inflicted stroke, the mere scourge or rein of absolute 
authority, softened perhaps by coaxing, flattery, and cajoling 
falsehood. To be guided by the Lord with his eye, — what 
docility does this imply in you, what simplicity in Christ ! 

Observe the conditions of such a guidance as this. In 
all guidance of beings endowed with reason, conscience, and 
free will, four things are ordinarily indispensable ; a rule, a 
motive, an inward power, an upward or onward pattern. 
In the case of men naturally, of you in your unconverted 
state, and out of Christ, what are these ] (1.) The rule — the 
law of course ; but it is the law which you feel, if strictly 
applied, must condemn you, and therefore presume that it must 
admit of relaxation. (2.) The motive — a mere sense of 
necessity, a feeling that you must do some homage. (3.) The 
power in you — your own frail resolution. (4.) The pattern 
before you — some one of the better sort among yourselves. 

But mark the change, when, as pardoned sinners, ransomed 
criminals, adopted children, you are guided by the Lord with 
his eye. (1.) As to the rule, it is the law still, but it is not 
the dead letter, but the living spirit of the law. It is not 
the law in its condemning form of a covenant of works, 
bringing you under the sentence of death, and putting you to 
all subtle shifts to evade it. But it is the law as magnified 
and made honourable by our righteous and suffering substi- 
tute, the law as satisfied, and therefore justifying, the 
law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the law of liberty, 
the law of love. Then (2.) As to the motive, it is not the 
desperate desire of some sort of partial and precarious ac- 
commodation yet to be effected, but the sweet sense of full 
and perfect reconciliation already freely and graciously secured. 



58 THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 

Again (3.) As to the inward moving power, it is the indwelling 
and inworking of the spirit of Christ. You are strengthened 
with might by the Spirit in the inner man ; Christ dwells in 
your heart by faith. And (4.) As to the ideal, or model, or 
example, it is Christ himself. It is a guidance (1) according to 
the free spirit, and not the mere servile letter of the law ; 
(2) through the motive, not of a servile dread of still im- 
pending wrath, but of love to him who has first loved us ; (3) 
by the power of that Spirit abiding in us, who worketh in us, 
both to will and to do of God's good pleasure; and (4) in the 
very steps of him who hath left us an example, and to whom 
we are to look as the author and finisher of our faith, who, for 
the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, 
and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. 

Surely there is great simplicity in such guidance as 
this. It is throughout the guidance, not of arbitrary 
force, but of reason and good feeling ; not of fear, but 
of love ; not of the flesh, but of the Spirit ; not of a 
miserably inadequate model, but of a perfect pattern ; 
not of the letter, but of the spirit of the law. The sim- 
plicity of it lies in its appealing to our highest sense of 
honour, our most generous and disinterested feelings of grati- 
tude and honour. There is unity, and therefore simplicity, 
in the reference throughout to the one Lord, for the rule, the 
motive, the inspiring power, and the animating pattern. 

But the subtilty of Satan, how manifold is it, how compli- 
cated are his insidious wiles, in this department, especially, of a 
holy walk, or of right and faithful discharge of practical duty. 
What a subtle science is casuistry, the science, in a special 
sense, of Satan, in which he is peculiarly at home. How in- 
geniously does he multiply his pleas in reference to all the 
several parts of evangelical holiness, the rule, the reason, the 
power, the pattern. 

(1.) lor the rule, — oh it cannot always be the strict unbend- 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHEIST. 59 

ing morality of the ten commandments. That standard it 
may he right and necessary generally to maintain, to guard 
against flagrant Antinomian and licentious ahuses. But all 
men except recluses know that allowances must he made 
in social life, and regard must he had to circumstances, and 
within certain limits there must he an accommodation of 
what God requires to what the world will hear. 

Then (2.) the motive of all you do ought douhtless to he 
not servile fear, hut filial love, not the mere dread of being 
visited with punishment, hut the desire to please, and it is 
plain that this motive has a very large and wide sweep, and 
might prompt many a generous and even chivalrous service 
and sacrifice in God's cause, from which the other motive 
might hold you excused. Still, practically, as things now 
are, it is a great matter if a Christian mixing with society 
keep clear of what is positively forbidden, and if nothing 
palpably wrong can be established against him. 

And so also (3.) as to the power, it is admitted vaguely and 
generally, that you have a promise of divine aid to help 
your infirmities and strengthen you for the Lord's work and 
warfare. But this, alas ! does not hinder a large measure of 
the very same apologetic pleading of human frailty by which 
worldly men are wont to palliate their shortcomings and 
excesses. 

And finally (4.) when we look to the pattern, how aptly 
does Satan teach us to evade the obligation of a full follow- 
ing of Christ, by suggesting sundry qualifications and limita- 
tions, — as that there are many things in which Christ, being 
divine, must be admitted to be inimitable, — until at last we 
come to feel practically, either that the imitation of him is a 
mere fiction, or that we are to fix for ourselves wherein, and 
to what extent it is to be realised. 

be not corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ, 
as guiding his people with his eye according to the spirit of 



60 THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHEIST. 

his own holy law, through the sweet constraining influence of 
love to himself, by the power of his Spirit abiding in them 
as in him, and after the high example he has left them that 
they should follow his steps. Ah ! it is a blessed simplicity ! 
It is the eye of Christian love. It is the charm of Christian 
life. To me to live is Christ : Christ the rule ; Christ the 
motive ; Christ the power ; Christ the pattern. To live 
under Christ, for Christ, by Christ, after Christ ; to live, 
yet not I but Christ living in me, — and I living the life I 
now live in the flesh by the faith of the Son of God, who 
loved me and gave himself for me. 

V. The simplicity that is in Christ may be noted in con- 
nection with his second coming and glorious appearing. Here 
Satan has been expending not a little of his subtilty, through- 
out all ages of the Church's history, sometimes hiding this 
great doctrine, or contriving to have it kept in abeyance, and 
at other times complicating and embarrassing it, mixing up with 
it a variety of questions, scarcely, if at all, bearing on its real, 
vital, and practical import. 

For, in truth, as to all that is essential and influential, it 
would seem to be simple enough. The Lord cometh as our 
Judge. He cometh as our exceeding great reward. We are 
to appear before his judgment seat ; we are to be with him 
where he is, to see and share his glory. And if we add that 
his coming for these high ends is to be apprehended by us as 
both sudden and near at hand, we seem to have the main 
substance of the believer's very simple, but very glorious and 
very awful hope. 

Thus regarded, it is practically a most influential hope ; 
influential for its very simplicity. It sets you upon working, 
watching, waiting for the Lord. You work for him as ser- 
vants, not wicked and slothful, but diligent, as those who must 
give account to him. You watch for him, with loins girt 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 61 

and lamp burning, — not sleeping as do others, but watching 
and being sober, as children of the light and of the day, put- 
ting off sleep and drunkenness and all works of the night, — 
putting on the whole armour of light, looking up, looking out, 
as not knowing at what hour the Master may come. You 
wait for him. You wait, with what ardent longing ! I 
wait for the Lord. Yea, more than they that watch for 
the morning. When shall the day dawn and the shadows 
flee away ? Oh, when shall I welcome my returning 
Saviour? You wait for him with increasing ardour, as your 
growing likeness to him makes his fellowship more congenial ; 
and sorrows and separations set you more and more upon the 
anticipation of future reunion in him. You wait, how- 
ever, still, how patiently ! reconciled to every hard duty 
and every irksome trial by the promise of the Comforter 
now, and the sure hope of glory at the last. Now to be 
thus working, watching, waiting for the Lord, how simple and 
how blessed an attitude ! And thus to use for comfort and 
edification the great doctrine of his coming again, is surely to 
act according to the simplicity that is in Christ. 

Other inquiries there may be, of interest in their place, re- 
specting the times and seasons and events connected with the 
close of this world's dark history and the ushering in of a 
better day. But let not such detailed and complicated in- 
vestigations, which surely after all are to the believer person- 
ally of subordinate importance, as well as of uncertain issue, 
be so blended with the one grand outline of Jesus coming 
again to receive his people to himself, as to mar the impres- 
sion of its sublime and majestic unity and simplicity. 

This was a warning needed in the early church, as the 
apostle himself testifies, when some used the doctrine to de- 
ceive and perplex ; and he found it necessary, that he might 
prevent plain believers from being shaken in mind and 
troubled, to give an express and authoritative contradiction 



62 THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 

to some of the rumours that had beeu raised and circulated. 
And no intelligent observer, either of the past or of the pre- 
sent, will deny the necessity of a similar caution now. 

I ask you to distinguish here again, and here especially, 
between the complex and the simple : and I remind you that 
what really is to produce the right moral and spiritual effect 
upon your souls is not the crowded canvas and complicated 
scenery of a picture embracing all the particulars of a world's 
catastrophe, — no, not that, not that at all, but the one dread 
and holy image of Jesus, as he was taken up to heaven on 
Mount Olivet, so coming again, even as he was seen to go ! 
Be that coming when it may, it is still, as the polestar of the 
Church's hope, and the spur of her zeal, simple, solemn, in 
its very standing alone, isolated, solitary, separate and apart 
from all accessories of preceding and accompanying revolutions. 

Yes ! it is not earthquakes, or tempests, or deluges of 
fire ; it is not falling empires, mighty wars and tumults, 
convulsions of all sorts over all the earth ; it is not Babylon 
doomed nor Israel restored, nor all the vast upheaving of the 
social fabric that must attend such vicissitudes — though it well 
concerns the slumbering nations to give heed to these things, 
and watchmen in Zion must never cease to ring in the ears 
of a scoffing world the knell of its approaching dissolution ; — 
still, I say, it is not these, not these altogether, nor any of them, 
that I have before my eye, filling my whole soul, and heart, and 
mind, when I turn weeping from the grave of buried friend- 
ship, or rise startled from the couch of despondency and 
sloth — no, but Jesus my Lord, himself alone, the centre of 
ineffable brightness and beauty. Angels and the redeemed 
are around him : but it is himself alone that fixes my regard, 
and I, poor miserable I, a sinner saved by his grace, a servant 
working for his hire, a watcher waiting for his coming, — I 
rise, I rush forth, I run to meet — nay, I am caught up to meet 
— my Lord in the air. So shall I be ever with the Lord. 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 63 

1. To careless sinners we have a word to say. The sub- 
tilty of Satan is very apt to beguile and corrupt; but we 
have to remind you that there is a simplicity in Satan that 
is more insidious and disastrous still. There are those whom 
Satan leads captive at pleasure, and on whom it is really not 
worth his while to waste or expend his subtilty at all. When 
the strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in 
peace : he has no occasion for the use either of his arts or of 
his arms. It is when a stronger than he cometh upon him, 
to overcome him, that he needs to have recourse to the vio- 
lence of threats or the artifice of alluring wiles. It is for his 
victims that have escaped, or that are escaping from his 
grasp, that he reserves the practice of his stratagems : it is 
they who alas ! from personal experience, are not ignorant of 
his devices. With you, who are going on contentedly in the 
broad road, he uses no refinement : to you his lies are simple 
enough ; nay he scarcely needs more than one ; his old lie 
with which he began, "ye shall not surely die." Ah! it may 
well be that all our discussions of nice and intricate points of 
conscience are unintelligible to you. You have little sympathy 
with the strange varieties of frame and feeling that attend a 
spiritual awakening, and you cannot comprehend the turns and 
windings of a poor soul, hunted as the wounded hart in the 
desert, and panting for the water brooks. How it should be 
so very difficult to assuage the anguish of a guilty conscience, 
or to pacify the fears of a broken heart, or to get a sinner to 
believe in the forgiveness of sins, or to make him continue to 
rely od the mercy of heaven, you cannot understand at all ; it 
seems all to you so simple, easy, natural ; so much almost 
a matter of course ; that you should be let alone now and 
let off somehow at the last. But I beseech you rather to 
look to the simplicity that is in Christ than to lean on the 
simplicity that is in Satan. The simplicity that is in Satan ! 
Truly simple enough are they that believe Ms fond and 



64 THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHRIST. 

simple lie ! But hear another voice, simple enough too : 
" How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity ; and fools 
hate knowledge 1 Turn ye at my reproof. Behold, I will 
pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make known my words 
unto you." And hear another voice, yet the same, simple enough 
too ! and awful ! — awful for its simplicity. " Because I have 
called and ye refused, I have stretched forth my hand and 
no man regarded ; but ye have set at nought my counsel and 
would none of my reproof ; I also will laugh at your calamity ; 
I will mock when your fear cometh." " Then shall they call 
upon me, but I will not answer ; they shall seek me early, 
but they shall not find me ! " " Seek ye the Lord while he 
may be found ! Call ye upon him while he is near !" 

2. To anxious souls I would say, Let not the subtilty 
of Satan distress you beyond measure. And above all, 
let it not surprise you ! Count it not strange that you 
fall into divers temptations ! When you are thus tempted, 
do not yield to the crowning temptation of imagining 
that your case is strange and your experience singular. 
This is a great snare. It ministers to a certain feeling of 
half-unconscious self-complacency, as you brood over diffi- 
culties and doubts and embarrassments ; fancying that never 
was there soul-exercise, never soul-distress, like yours. Be 
sure that there hath no temptation befallen you but such as 
common to men. And remember your way of escape is not 
the way of combating in argument the subtilty of Satan ; but 
the common, far safer and simpler way of simply acquiescing 
anew, and ever anew, in the simplicity of Christ ! For you 
are no match in special pleading for the Master of that 
science ! The question of your peace with God, and your 
comfortable walk with him, is one that never will be solved 
or settled beforehand by any processes of subtle reasoning. 
You must solve and settle it experimentally. Taste and see 
that the Lord is good. Venture your soul upon the simpli- 



THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHEIST. 65 

city that is in Christ, his simple faithfulness, the simpli- 
city of his promise, — " Him that cometh unto me I will in 
no wise cast out." Let Satan perplex the question as he may. 
Let him conjure up doubtful disputations by the score, — by 
the hundred. Let him summon a very legion of dark 
surmises to disconcert you ! Be you simple. Be you 
decided. Linger not. Hesitate not. Do to God, — Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost, — the justice you would be ashamed to 
deny to an earthly friend. Simply believe that the Father 
means what he says when he beseeches you to be reconciled 
to him in his Son ; that the Son means what he says when 
he cries, " Come unto me, ye weary ; " that the Holy Ghost 
means what he says when, together with the Bride, he says, 
" Come, take of the water of life freely ! " 

3. To you who believe I would say, — Let there be simpli- 
city in you corresponding to the simplicity that is in Christ. 
In all simplicity, accept Christ as your substitute ! In all 
simplicity, comply with his call to come to him, and through 
him, to the Father ! In all simplicity, abide in him and be 
satisfied with his fulness ! In all simplicity, yield yourselves 
to his gracious and loving guidance ! In all simplicity, be ever 
looking out for his glorious coming ! All on his part, — in 
his treatment of you, in his offering himself for you ; in his 
giving himself to you ; in his keeping you and making you 
complete in himself ; in his guiding you with his eye ; in his 
coming again to receive you to himself, that where he is you 
may be also ; — all is simple, free, generous, unreserved ! 
There is no keeping back of anything. He opens his heart, 
his hand, to you 1 Let all on your part, in your treatment 
of him, be simple too ! Be upon honour with him ! Be 
guileless, frank, cordial, in your reliance with him ; your 
submission to him ; your working and waiting for him ! So 
will you taste the blessedness of fully realising the simplicity 
that is in Christ. Yours will be the enlargement of heart 



6Q THE SIMPLICITY THAT IS IN CHKIST. 

that, springing out of a simple faith in Christ, takes in all 
the fulness of his glorious gospel. Yours will be the alacrity, 
and cheerfulness, and joy of running with heart enlarged in 
the way of the divine commandments, and walking freely as 
well as humbly with your God. Your path will be as the 
shining light, shining more and more unto the perfect day. 
All embarrassment, all constraint, all reserve, being at an end ; 
your fellowship in the Spirit is with the Father, and with 
his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. 



DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 67 



IV. 
DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 

" For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. " — Col. hi. 3. 

It is the Christian state that is here described ; the state of 
the real Christian. And it is described in a tw.ofold aspect ; 
as a state of death, and a state of life. The paradox is not 
peculiar to this passage. We have it in Galatians ii. 19, 20. 
But it is put here in a very pointed form. Let us look at 
both sides. 

I. " Ye are dead." This is strong language to be addressed 
to true believers. But it is very gracious language. It is the 
reverse or opposite of what the apostle had said before — 
"Being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your 
flesh" (ii. 13). Blessed be God ! from that death you are 
delivered. But you are dead still. And it is your being 
dead still that explains your deliverance from the other death. 
I say, your being dead still; now and always. For the 
apostle does not speak of a single event, consummated at 
once, so as to be past and over ; but of a prolonged and con- 
tinued experience. He says not merely, Ye died or have died, 
with Christ, as on your first believing in him, and being 
made partakers of his death. That would be true. For, in 
conversion, the sinner does indeed die with Christ, being 
buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ 
was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, even so, 
he also should walk in newness of life. But the text speaks 
not merely of your dying once, but of your continuing to be 



68 DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 

dead. Ye are dead. The expression is quite indefinite. Ye 
became dead, and ye are dead still. 

It would thus appear that there are three stages of this 
death of believers. In their original state of unconcern 
and unbelief, they are dead. In their effectual calling by 
the Holy Ghost, they die. And ever after, so long as they 
remain on earth, they are to reckon themselves dead indeed 
(Eom. vi. 11). 

But, in another view, it is the same death throughout : 
the same state of being, only regarded, successively, in different 
lights. This death is, in other words, a name for your 
character and condition, as you are in yourselves. That 
character is enmity against God. That condition is liability 
to wrath. You are dead, as not naturally loving, or willingly 
subject to the Holy God, but estranged from him. You are 
dead, as lying helplessly under his righteous sentence of 
condemnation. The only difference, at different stages of your 
experience, lies in your apprehension of this death, this 
character of enmity, and this condition of condemnation, as 
really and justly your own. 

1. Naturally, and until the Holy Spirit work a decided 
change upon you, in your effectual calling, you do not feel 
that such really is your character ; you will not admit that 
such righteously is your condition. You put away from 
you the charge of enmity. It seems to you that you do, in 
some tolerable measure, love God, and that you do, to a 
considerable extent, serve him faithfully. It is true, indeed, 
as you must confess, that you are occasionally sadly apt to 
forget God, that you sometimes grow weary of his word and 
his worship, and that you take some little liberties with the 
strict letter of his commandments. You acknowledge also 
that you must plead guilty, at times, to the cherishing of 
thoughts and the indulgence of passions, the uttering of 
words and the allowance of practices, which perhaps may not 



DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHEIST. 69 

be quite pleasing to him, and no doubt there are things in 
your temper and conduct which might be otherwise ordered 
if you were always remembering God. But all this is not 
inconsistent with a very fair amount of real reverence and 
regard for your Maker and his authority ; any more than the 
frequent carelessness or waywardness of a stirring child must 
necessarily be incompatible with sincere love, at bottom, 
towards his parent. You cannot be constantly serious and on 
your guard. Perhaps, indeed, you might be more so than 
you are. You pretend not to be free from the error and 
infirmity of a heart, that may, at times, be too thoughtless of 
God, and too much engrossed with other objects. If that be 
the charge brought against you, you can understand its 
meaning and admit its justice. But to say that you have no 
love to God at all, — nay, that you positively hate God, — is 
more than you can admit. You are conscious of no such 
aversion. You can plead guilty to no such enmity. 

And in regard to the other element of this death, you 
put away from you also the sentence of wrath. For not 
realising your natural character as God's enemies, you cannot 
realise your condition as condemned. You feel indeed that 
you are not perfectly righteous, or altogether free from sin. 
You do therefore deserve some punishment at the hands of 
God, and you may need to be taught, by suffering some of the 
consequences of your heedlessness and folly, the necessity of 
greater prudence in future. Of course, also, you acknow- 
ledge that if God were to insist on the rigour of law to the 
utmost, he might perhaps sentence you to eternal death. 
But it seems to you that it would be strange if he did so. 
He must surely deal with you more leniently, and as you 
think also, more fairly. And so when you hear of a 
judgment to come, you cannot imagine, that in your case, it 
can be a very serious or alarming prospect ; or if it were, you 
cannot think it would be just. 



70 DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 

In this state of mind you are dead. You may be living 
in pleasure. But you are dead while you live. And your 
death consists in your being enemies to God and condemned 
by God. It is not merely your insensibility, or the deep 
slumber of your soul, or the dream of innocence and security, 
that constitutes this death. It is not your insensibility, but 
that to which you are insensible ; your guilt and condemna- 
tion in the sight of an avenging God. 

Suppose that under some strange hallucination the doomed 
felon, with the very halter fixed round his neck, should make 
his escape for an hour from the inevitable scaffold, and as- 
sume his place in some hall of commerce, or around some 
festive board ; he is dead, as a rebel, a convicted and sentenced 
criminal. But what is it that constitutes his death 1 Not 
the fitful madness which shocks his old companions as he 
thrusts his ill-omened presence among them; but the fact 
of his crime and the certainty of his doom. Let his drunken 
idiocy pass away. Let him once more realise his position. 
It is death still. 

This, then, is God's word to the unconverted. Ye are 
dead. As God's enemies, and as doomed criminals, ye are 
dead. You may be alive in your own opinion, but it is as 
Paul says he once was alive. It is without the law. " I 
was alive, righteous enough, safe enough, — ay, I was even a 
favourite of heaven. Sin in me was dormant and dead. It 
seemed to me that all was right. Alas ! it was a delusion 
altogether. I was alive without the law. The instant the 
commandment came ; the instant I was made to see and feel 
the full extent of God's claims upon me, the searching 
spirituality and holiness of his law, the law of perfect 
purity, the law of perfect love ; sin revived, it got strength 
and power to convict, to condemn me, sin revived and I 
died. Yes, I died." 

2. This is the second stage. In your effectual calling by 



DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHEIST. 7l 

the Holy Ghost you are made to recognise this death as real, 
and to acquiesce in it as just. Your enmity against God, and 
your condemnation by God, become sensible to your souls ; 
and in a way which makes you feel the enmity to be inex- 
cusable and the condemnation to be righteous. When the 
commandment came, I died ; I lost all the life I thought I 
had, all the rights, all the strength, I once relied on. I 
died, a lost and guilty sinner, no longer justifying myself, 
accepting, owning, the sentence of death as justly mine. 

Ah ! it is good thus to die, — to die thus now. Better 
that your sin should find you out, better that the commandment 
should come, and you should die now, than that the terrible 
discovery of what you are, the shock of the awakening to the 
reality of your death, should be reserved till the hour of 
doom. For your sin shall find you out. The commandment 
must come. 

Behold the awakened sinner, out of Christ, by himself, 
alone, meeting his offended God, and seeing him as he is, in 
the hour of awakening, in the day of judgment. No fond 
persuasion has he now that he has loved or served that God 
sufficiently. Instinctively he feels at last that it was in a 
very different spirit, and after a very different manner, that 
he ought to have honoured and obeyed that holy loving God, 
It is all in vain now to call to mind decencies and charities, 
forms of devotion and deeds of humanity. The truth now 
bursts on him ; that the Eternal is a Sovereign ; that he is a 
Father; and that to give less than what a sovereign may 
claim and a father ask, with whatever phrase of compliment 
or duty, is but to cover over real disaffection and radical 
estrangement of heart from him. At any rate, there now he 
stands, before the sinner's startled eye, inflexible, uncompro- 
mising, terrible in his wrath. In the hands of an angry God, 
the arrested convict is held fast. He may affect to be angry 
too. Fain would he accuse the Just One of unfairness. Fain 



72 DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 

would he charge the God of love with harshness. But his 
own heart condemns him, proud and stubborn as it is. There 
he stands, resisting God, yet relentlessly doomed by him for 
ever. 

Were it not better far that your eyes should now be 
opened to that scene of holiness and of wrath, of unbending 
law and unrelenting judgment, which one day, either now or 
hereafter, you have to face 1 Were it not every way better 
to have the bitterness of this death over ? And may it not 
be so to you? Was it not so to Paul when he said — "I 
died" 1 "I through the law am dead to the law, that I might 
live unto God. I am crucified with Christ" (Gal. ii. 19, 20). 
When the law kills, it may be by a severe stroke. It may 
be a sharp, a stinging, death. The humiliation, the shame, 
the grief of it, may be trying to flesh and blood, to heart and 
conscience. There will be solemn awe and terror in your 
awakening to the apprehension of your being indeed dead. 
But there will be no resistance, no resentment ; no resistance 
to the holy sovereignty which you now feel you have slighted ; 
no resentment against the righteous sentence of condemnation 
which you would now no longer, even if you could, evade. 
For when you thus die, do you not die in and with Christ 1 
" 1 through the law am dead to the law." The law kills, con- 
demns, slays me, empties me of all conceit of life, inflicts and 
executes on me the grievous sentence of penal death. But 
lo ! near me, making himself one with me, making me one 
with himself, in this very death, the Son of the very God 
whose law condemns me, the living Saviour ! Let me 
make his death mine, as he made my death his. If die I 
must, let me die in Christ. Let me be crucified with Christ. 
Oh ! the blessedness, of thus perceiving, for the first time, 
what this death really is, in the cross of your dying Eedeemer, 
and feeling yourselves to be dead indeed only when you die 
with him. Not that you have less seriousness or sadness, in 



DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHEIST. 73 

this way of becoming acquainted with this death, than in the 
other way, of having trial of it by yourself alone without 
Christ. No ! There is more, incalculably more. There is a 
deeper insight into the claims of God's holy supremacy, and 
the corresponding inexcusable guilt of all your attempts to- 
wards a compromise with him. There is a livelier alarm at 
the thought of your prolonged estrangement from him. 
There is shame to which the unbroken heart is a stranger, 
and sorrow such as a sense of God's love alone can cause. 
But along with all this, there is unquestioning submission, 
so that you justify God, even in that death to which he con- 
demns you. How, indeed, can it be otherwise 1 You are 
crucified with Christ. You are dead in him. 

3. As in your effectual calling, so in all your subsequent 
life on earth, you continue to be thus dead with Christ. In 
fact, you become so in your own esteem more and more. Your 
growing acquaintance with the character of God, with the ex- 
cellency of his law, the reasonableness of its requirements, the 
fulness of his grace, the riches of his salvation, discovers more 
and more your natural enmity against him. And then, is not 
your condemnation under the righteous sentence of the 
law more and more thoroughly realised % Your very union 
with Christ, by which you become interested in all the 
efficacy of his death, gives you a more searching insight 
into the meaning, the reality, the righteousness of that death, 
as endured by substitution for you, and as now, in all its actual 
import, made really, personally, consciously your own. Always 
you bear about with you the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the 
life also of Jesus may be made manifest in your mortal 
bodies. 

Ye are dead. In and with Christ ye are habitually, con- 
stantly, dead. Your sin is ever before you. And the sentence 
of your sin is ever acknowledged, recognised, embraced by 
you, as really and justly yours. Ye are dead, and this very 



74 DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 

death is, in truth, your life. For who, or what shall slay you 
now, seeing ye are dead already 1 He who is low fears no fall. 
He who is already and always dead, what fear can he have of 
any farther death? What fear now of anything that may 
inflict death 1 Does the law again point against me the 
thunders of its deadly threatenings of wrath 1 What harm 
can they do me, since I am dead already % Are carnal ordi- 
nances and rudiments of the world, ceremonial rites and ob- 
servances, brought up in formidable array to condemn me for 
for their neglect 1 How can they reach one who independently 
of them is otherwise, and by a prior right, confessedly and 
justly condemned before 1 I am dead, and against the dead 
no charge can be brought. I am dead, and over the dead no 
enemy has power. I am dead, and to the dead there is no 
more fear of death. This is my safety. This alone is my 
liberty : to be always, in myself, dead. To cease for a moment 
to be so is to aspire to a life which I cannot sustain. It is 
to provoke the adversary to a new trial of strength with me, 
and to brave anew the judgment of God's law. It is only as one 
dead that I am freed from sin, from its terrors, its tempta- 
tions, its triumphs ; and the more I die with Christ, enter- 
ing into the meaning of his cross, reckoning myself to be 
condemned with him, the more am I able to defy every 
attempt to subject me anew, in any other way, to condemna- 
tion. To every challenge at any time which would require 
me now to answer for myself as a criminal or as a rebel 
doomed to death, my reply is that I am dead already. Or 
rather, it is Christ's reply for me. " He is dead in me. My 
death is his." And I, believing through grace, acquiesce : 
" Yea, Lord, I am dead in thee. I live no more myself. It is 
thou who art my life. I live ; yet not I : thou livest in me." 

II. As it is said of those who live in pleasure, that they 
are dead while they live, so it may be said of you who believe 



DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHEIST. 75 

in Jesus, that you live while you are dead. And your life is 
hid with Christ in God. Follow Christ now, from earth to 
heaven ; from the scene of his agony here below, to the 
scene of his blessed joy in the presence of the Father above. 
Enter within the veil, into the holiest of all, the very inmost 
recess of the sanctuary above, into which your Saviour has 
passed. What is the nature of this most sacred retreat 1 and 
what the Saviour's manner of life there 1 In the bosom of 
the Father, in most intimate fellowship with the Father, 
he who liveth and was dead is now alive for evermore. And 
there, where he is, your life now is. It is with him, for he is 
your life. It is where he is, and as his, in God. And it is 
hid there. 

1. Your life is with Christ. It is in fact identified with 
him. He is your life, and he is so in two respects. 

(1) You live with Christ, as partakers of his right to live. 
And oh ! how ample is that right. For who is he with whom 
your life is now bound up 1 He has life in himself. In his 
own nature he is originally and eternally the living one. For 
you, who are dead, to be attached to him, ensures your life ; 
since then all his right and prerogative of life becomes yours. 
Your life with Christ is thus the counterpart of his death for 
you j and as he was willing to make your death his own, so 
you need not scruple or hesitate to make his life yours. For 
he has store of life enough for himself and for you ; and you 
need have no fear of drawing too largely on that store. Even 
his dying with you and for you did not exhaust it. Neither 
will his taking you to live with him. 

If I am struggling desperately and ready to sink in the 
billows of an angry sea, and if a friend cast himself in to save 
me, I may, by hanging upon him and clinging to him with 
the gripe of death, merely drag him down along with me to 
the depths of a watery grave. Or if he undertake to answer 
for me in the judgment, my miserable case may but serve to 



76 DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 

overwhelm him in the participation of my shame and guilt. He 
may merely succeed in destroying himself, by involving him- 
self in the responsibility of my offence. But Christ, having 
life in himself, has power to lay down his own life, and has 
power to take it again. When I cleave to him, a wretched 
perishing sinner, the billows of wrath go over his head, and he 
tastes the death to which I am doomed. But nevertheless he 
lives still, he rises from the midst of the waves, he walks on 
the waters once more, and I, grasping his outstretched hand, 
— nay, rather grasped by him in his strong arm, — am forth- 
with in safety, with him, on the shore. He makes himself 
indeed answerable for my sin ; and for any man, or angel, for 
any creature, however high, or however holy, to do this, could 
not but entail on him everlasting destruction, eternal death. 
But he is no creature. ■ He is the ever-living Son, righteous 
and holy. And the burden which must have weighed down 
any other substitute or surety to hell, and that for ever, he 
can sustain and yet live. What a privilege, then, to have my 
life with him ! 

And may this indeed be my privilege 1 asks some poor 
trembling soul. Wherefore should it not ? On what terms 
is it to become yours 1 In what character are you to appro- 
priate it 1 In the character simply and exclusively of one 
dead. Eor what do you read as your warrant ? " Ye are 
dead, and your life is with Christ." To be dead is the 
only requisite preliminary to your life being with Christ. 
And is not this your case 1 Are you not dead, as an enemy 
to God, righteously condemned by him 1 Then rejoice to 
know and believe that your life is with Christ. Ah ! do 
you still hesitate 1 Are you waiting anxiously and impatiently 
until you find in you some symptom of a new-born spiritual 
life before you lay hold of Christ, or let him lay hold of you ! 
Nay, nay, have done with this longing after a righteousness 
or life of your own. You feel that you have none. Be con- 



DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHEIST. 77 

tent that you should have none. Bemember that it is not as 
one living, but as one dead, that you have your life in 
Christ. Yes, there is life in him for you, even for you who 
are dead. " When I am weak, then am I strong." When I 
am dead, then I live. 

(2.) As you live with Christ, in respect of your new right 
to live, so you live with Christ in respect of the new spirit 
of your life. For not only must you who are dead receive a 
title to live. You must besides receive power to take advan- 
tage of your title, to avail yourselves of it, and actually to 
live. And for both alike you must be indebted to Christ. 
Your right to live, and your power to live, are both with 
Christ. Your right to live is with him, as having life in 
himself. Your power to live is with him, as quickening 
whom he will. He has the residue of the Spirit. The Holy 
Ghost is given through him, in respect of that very right- 
eousness of his through which he liveth, as just, and justifying 
many. If you would have this life, then, have it with Christ, 
with him altogether, and with him alone. He alone has it 
in himself, and he alone can make it yours. 

And still, once more, remember, it is as those who are 
deacl, that you have this life with Christ, this right and 
this power to live. Say not, then, that you cannot live ; that 
you have not life enough even to lay hold of the life which 
is with Christ for you. Neither the right to live, nor the 
power, is with you. Both are with Christ. " When we 
were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the 
ungodly" (Bom." v. 6). While ye are yet without strength, 
you are raised from death to life, by the mighty working of 
the same power which brought Christ again from the grave. 
" Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, 
and Christ shall give thee light" (Eph. v. 14). Say not that 
you cannot comply with this invitation, or accept this offer. 
He who calls you is the same who commanded the sick man 



78 DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 

to rise and walk, who said to the dead man in his tomb, 
" Lazarus, come forth." You are dead. But your life is with 
Christ. His very word to you, when he says, Believe and 
live, is itself life ; and dead as you are, he makes you hear 
his voice. And in hearing it, you have power to obey his 
call, to embrace the Saviour, and to be saved. 

2. Further, this your life, being with Christ, must be 
where he is. It must therefore be in God. He is your life. 
And where he is, there is your life. But he is in the bosom 
of the Father. Thence he came to accomplish the purposes 
of humiliation. Thither he returned when these purposes 
were fulfilled, when the Father's holy name was glorified, and 
the Father's work of redeeming mercy finished. Your life 
with Christ, therefore, is in God. For in his favour is life, 
and his loving-kindness is better than life. 

It is in God as its source and fountain. For all life, 
especially all spiritual life, is from the Father. "As the 
Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to 
have life in himself" (John v. 26). The Father raised him 
from the dead. He "brought again from the dead our Lord 
Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of 
the everlasting covenant" (Heb. xiii. 20). It is true that 
Christ had power to lay down his life, and he had power to 
take it again ; and his own divine power was manifested in 
his resurrection, by which he was declared to be the Son of 
God with power. It is true also that the Eternal Spirit, the 
Spirit of holiness, was the immediate agent in this transaction. 
Still, the life which Christ condescended, as the risen Saviour, 
to receive on your behalf was from the Father, as its fountain. 
It had its source in the Father. And so also your life, with 
Christ, is in God, as its source. It is God that justifieth. It 
is he who reconciles you to himself. The grace, the favour, 
the love, the free forgiveness and full acceptance, in which 
this life consists, all flow from the Father; they are all his 



DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 79 

gifts to you, and for them all, you are continually, at every 
instant, dependent upon him. 

And as your life with Christ is in God as its source 
and fountain, so it is in God also, as its seat and centre and 
home. The life which the Father imparts finds its dwelling- 
place in himself. It consists in his favour, and it is exercised 
in his fellowship. The love, flowing from him, returns and 
rests in him. We love him who first loved us. " Return unto 
thy rest, my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with 
thee" (Psalm cxvi. 7). "Being justified by faith, we have 
peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ " (Eom. v. 1). 

Again, your life with Christ is in God, as its model, 
or type, or pattern. " God is love ; and he that dwelleth in 
love dwelleth in God, and God in him" (1st John iv. 16). 
Beholding his glory, we are changed into the same image. 
Living in God, we are conformed to his likeness. " He that 
loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love" (ib. iv. 8). So, on 
the other hand, your life with Christ being in God, you know 
God, and dwell in him. And, .knowing him, you love. It 
becomes your very nature to love, even as it is his nature to 
love. Dwelling in him, you dwell in love ; loving him 
because he first loved you, and for his sake loving your brother 
also. And your love in a measure is like that of God himself; 
pure, holy, disinterested, free, as his is; self-sacrificing, too, 
and self-denying; being that love which "suffereth long, 
and is kind ; which envieth not ; which vaunteth not itself, 
is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not 
her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not 
in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth all things, 
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things" 
(1 Cor. xiii. 4-7). Thus imbibing his own spirit of love, 
and being kind even to the evil and to the unthankful, ye 
are the children of your heavenly Father, and are perfect, 
even as he is perfect. 



80 DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 

Once more, your life with Christ is in God, as its 
great end and aim — its motive and object. It is to him now 
that you live, for his glory, for his will, for his pleasure. 
Believing in Jesus, you are to the praise of his glory, to 
whose grave you are debtors. And your main concern now 
is, that God may be glorified in you still. This indeed is 
your very life, to glorify God. You live, then, only when you 
are seeking, desiring, longing for the advancement of his 
glory, and are willing that in you he should be glorified, 
whether by life or by death. Such is your life in God, if it be 
life in Christ. For such was, and such is, his life in the 
Father. 

3. Finally, this life with Christ in God is hid. It must 
needs be so, since it enters in within the veil. There is, of 
course, a sense in which it is not, and cannot be hid. Its 
fruits and symptoms are manifest. But its principle is hid. 
For as the movements of the living body are sensible and 
palpable, while the mystery of that unseen vital energy which 
sets the head and the heart in motion, baffles all inquiry : 
so while the outward walk is patent to all on earth, the life 
of the soul with Christ is hid in God in heaven. Your life 
is hid. It is an affecting characteristic of this life that it is 
hidden. It suggests several touching ideas of security, of 
spirituality, of privacy, and of seclusion. 

Your life is hid, for security. It is hid with Christ, 
in God, where no coarse eye can reach, and no rude hand 
can touch it. It is hid from the storm and the tempest. It 
is hid from the relentless accuser of the brethren. It 
is hid from the secret counsel of the wicked and the strife of 
tongues. It is hid from the unwise and flattering friend. It 
is hid from the spoiler and the foe. It is hid in God's 
pavilion, in the secret of his tabernacle, in the hollow of his 
hand, where your name is engraven on his palms. It is 
not hidden so that it can ever be overlooked or forgotten by 



DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 81 

him. But it is hidden so that sin and Satan and the world 
seek in vain to come nigh to it. 

What blessed confidence may this impart even to you 
whose life may seem to be but as a quivering spark. Feeble, 
flickering, unsteady as it may be, such as the slightest 
breath might extinguish, God takes it into his keeping, 
hides it, cherishes and fosters it, until it be revived. Have 
you life at all with Christ, be it ever so precarious, as if 
scarce a pulse were beating 1 — Is there but the faintest sigh, 
the quivering of but a limb, to show that the weary and 
wounded soldier on Satan's dreary battle-field is not quite 
dead 1 Left to languish on the plain, with the keen and 
cutting night breeze chilling his stagnant blood, and the 
feet of many a charger trampling him in the dust, and the 
swords of hostile bands flashing over him — how soon would 
the spark of life be extinct ! But your life is not liable to 
such exposure, fallen and sore stricken as you are. It is hid 
with Christ in God. You are his hidden ones ; safe in the 
hollow of the rock in which he shelters you, safe under the 
shadow of his wings. Your life is hid with Christ in God. 
It stands not in the opinion of men, who, judging according 
to the outward appearance, may condemn those whom God 
hath justified. It depends not upon your being able to meet 
Satan's charges, or even your own accusations of yourselves. 
It is not in human approbation, or in a tampering with 
Satan's soothing wiles, or in the complacency of a formal 
self-righteousness, that now you live. As to all these, you 
are dead • with them all you can now dispense. For your 
life is hid with Christ in God, where he will care for it well, 
if only you leave it entirely to him. 

Your life is hid, as a life that is no longer carnal and 
earthly, but spiritual and heavenly. It is not an outward 
life of profession merely, or of ceremonial observances. It is 
life in the hidden man of the heart, life itself hid with 

G 



82 DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 

Christ in God. Hence it is altogether independent of what 
the apostle calls the rudiments of this world. It is quite in- 
consistent with subjection to ordinances (ii. 20) ; you need 
not now concern yourselves about such a life, or such a notion 
of life, as these could sustain. You are no more striving to 
make good a poor and precarious life for yourselves, based upon 
any such outward and formal righteousness. As to any 
such life, or any such title to life, you are dead. And you 
are contented and thankful to be dead ; your life now is inward 
and spiritual. It is a real life of inward and conscious re- 
conciliation to God ; inward and conscious walking with 
God. It is life in God ; life therefore hid in God. 

Hence it is a life of intimacy ; and as it were of con- 
fidential fellowship. You are the men of God's secret (Job 
xix. 19). You are his friends, to whom he makes known 
what he does. " The secret of the Lord is with them that 
fear him, and he will shew them his covenant" (Ps. xxv. 14). 
"His secret is with the righteous" (Prov. iii. 32). To men 
generally it is only the outward aspect of the works and ways 
of God which is revealed ; and that they are at a loss to 
understand. In the things he has made, they see little more 
than what furnishes matter for vacant wonder or curious 
speculation. And in his providential dealings how much is 
there that is dark ! " How unsearchable are his judgments, and 
his ways past finding out \" How hard a thing do the un- 
godly and the worldly find it to be even to imagine an 
explanation of his procedure, to conjecture what may possibly 
be the meaning of his actings. To them the whole is a 
mighty maze, without a plan. Things good and evil, plea- 
sant and painful, terrible and joyful, are mingled and jumbled 
together in inextricable confusion. What can they do but 
live at random, and as if by chance ; receiving whatever comes 
as best they may ; letting the world pass, and taking things as 
easily as they can ? 



DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHEIST. 83 

But if your life is hid with Christ in God, you stand in 
his counsel. You are in his secret, as it were, behind the 
scenes. You have the key to all the mysteries of his govern- 
ment. To you now all is not a chaos or a blank, a confused 
pageant or a troubled dream. You are, as it were, admitted 
into God's chamber ; you have an insight into his plan and 
purpose as the God of grace and of judgment. The present 
chequered scene is no longer a mere enigma to you. You 
know what it means. God's long-suffering patience with the 
wicked, whom he would fain win to himself ; his dispensations 
of fatherly love towards his own people, whom he corrects 
and chastens ; his warnings of wrath ; his tokens for good ; 
the benefits with which he loads his enemies ; the trials with 
which he visits his children ; the whole scheme of his 
administration ; however incomprehensible to others, is not 
now all dark and hard to you. Hence you can stand serene 
in life's shifting vicissitudes and death's dread terrors ; amid 
the war of elements and the crash of worlds. You know that 
all is well ; that all the Lord's ways are just and true. You 
are not apt to be taken by surprise. It is yours to see, in the 
ceaseless march of all things here below, the unfolding of the 
plan of redeeming love. And in the very dissolution of 
universal nature, you can hail the advent of the new heavens 
and the new earth. 

Once more, your life with Christ in God is hid, as being a 
life of seclusion from the world's eye, and separation from the 
world's sympathy. The world cannot discern or appreciate it. 
They cannot believe in its reality. They have no apprehension 
of its spirit. Yes ; you have a rank that is concealed from 
the carnal mind. " Behold what manner of love the Father 
hath bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of 
God • therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew 
him not" (1 John iii. 1). You have riches of which the 
world cannot conceive, the unsearchable riches of Christ. 



84 DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 

The pearl of great price is yours, though, none but you 
recognise it. You carefully hide and keep it. Almost all 
things about your life are hidden. It has its hidden source 
and spring • Christ living in you ; Christ in you the hope of 
glory. It has its hidden motive, for which the world will 
give you no credit • to you to live is Christ. It has its hidden 
food ; you have meat to eat that the world knoweth not of ; 
the hidden manna ; the word of Christ dwelling in you richly. 
It has its hidden joys, and its hidden sorrows too, with which 
a stranger may not intermeddle ; its hidden history and 
exercise of soul in the privacy of your secret closet ; in deep 
experiences of the heart, known only to your Father and 
your God. 

But though your life, as believers, is hid, its outward 
workings and movements, its fruits and effects, are and 
must be, visible and palpable. It is a life which manifests 
itself. The natural life is in large measure hid. Its principle, 
its manner of being, its sustenance, growth, decay, revival, 
much about it is hid. But it acts outwardly in word and 
deed, in speech and behaviour. So also the spiritual life, 
however hid it may be in many aspects of it, must come out 
in unmistakable proofs of its reality. " The fruit of the 
Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
faith, meekness, temperance" (Gal. v. 22, 23). " Add to 
your faith, virtue ; and to virtue, knowledge ; and to know- 
ledge, temperance ; and to temperance, patience • and to 
patience, godliness ; and to godliness, brotherly kindness ; 
and to brotherly kindness, charity " (2 Peter i. 5-7). " Let 
your light so shine before men, that they may see your good 
works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven " (Matt. v. 
16). Out of the abundance of the heart let the mouth speak. 
Trom within, from the Spirit in you, let rivers of living 
waters flow. 

Then your life is not to be always hidden. "When 



DEATH AND LIFE WITH CHRIST. 85 

Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear 
with hirn in glory " (Col. iii. 4). Its being hidden is, in one 
view, an advantage meanwhile to this life ; as a hiding-place 
from the tempest's fury, or from war's alarm, be it ever so 
lonely and so dreary, is welcome to the traveller or the 
patriot. " Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, 
and shut thy doors about thee ; hide thyself as it were for a 
little moment." Yes ; for a little moment. But only 
"until the indignation be overpast" (Isa. xxvi. 20). But 
the traveller rejoices to walk abroad when the blast is over. 
The patriot is glad when persecution yields to peace ; and he 
is free to quit his close retreat. For it is, on the whole, a 
drawback on the enjoyment of this life with Christ in God 
that it is hid. The believer often feels the lack of sympathy, 
and the pain of being misinterpreted and misunderstood. 
He looks forward to the day when clouds and shadows shall 
flee away, and all shall be open fellowship and joy. 

Finally, for unbelievers as well as believers, for all of us 
alike, it is a solemn question — What is your hidden life 1 ? 
For every man has a hidden life ; a life that he lives apart 
from even his dearest bosom friend ; a life that he lives alone • 
in his lonely musings ; in his solitary closet ; in the deep re- 
cesses of his inmost heart. What, my brother ! is your 
hidden life, your real life ? For your hidden life is your 
real life. Your life outwardly, before men ; in the sight of 
the world and the church; may be all that could well be desired. 
But what of your inner hidden life ; your real life, I repeat % 
Is it life with Christ in God, the life of love 1 Be very 
sure that, whatever it is, the day will declare it. " For there 
is nothing covered that shall not be revealed ; neither hid, 
that shall not be known " (Luke xii. 2). 



86 ISAIAH'S VISION. 



ISAIAH'S VISIOX. 

" In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a 
throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above 
it stood the seraphims : each one had six wings ; with twain he 
covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with 
twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, 
holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts : the whole earth is full of his glory. 
And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, 
and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, "Woe is me ! for 
I am undone ; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in 
the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the 
King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, 
having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs 
from off the altar : and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, 
this hath touched thy lips ; and thine iniquity is taken away, and 
thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, 
"Whom shall I send, and who will go for us ? Then said I, Here 
am I ; send me." — Isaiah vi. 1-8. 

I do not intend to consider this chapter historically, or bio- 
graphically, or exegetically. I do not inquire into the signi- 
ficancy of the date assigned to this ecstatic rapture or vision 
which, it records ; although the place it occupies in the course 
of the Lord's dealings with his people may and must have 
some meaning. TsTor do I raise any question about its place 
in the prophet's own life ; as for instance, whether what he 
describes was his preparation for his prophetic mission gene- 
rally, or his preparation for some one special prophetic mes- 



ISAIAH'S VISION. 87 

sage. And I abstain from any critical examination of the 
passage. I wish, to deal with it practically, as indicating what 
must be the common experience of every servant of the Lord, 
be he a minister in his church or an ordinary member, if he 
is to be truly fitted for undertaking any work for the Lord ; 
and if he is to be welcomed when he offers to undertake it. 

Of course, I approach this chapter, with this practical 
view, under the guidance of the apostle John. In the 
twelfth chapter of his Gospel, summing up in dark enough 
colours the general issue of the Lord's ministry with re- 
spect to the Jews as a people, John explains that seeming 
anomaly, the ill-success of such a preacher, by a reference 
to what had been foretold in prophecy ; especially in the pro- 
phecy of Isaiah. He quotes two passages. " But though he 
had done many miracles before them, yet they believed not on 
him : that the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, 
which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report 1 and to 
whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed 1 Therefore 
they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, He hath 
blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart ; that they should 
not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and 
be converted, and I should heal them" (John xii. 37-40). 
And with reference to the last passage, quoted from this sixth 
chapter of Isaiah, to connect it more closely with the question 
on hand, John adds : " These things said Esaias, when he saw 
his glory, and spake of him" (ver. 41). It was Christ's glory 
therefore that Isaiah saw. It was of Christ that he spoke. 
The scene is Messianic. Christ is in it. And, as I hope to 
show, Christ is in it all through. 

He is in it, in the sight which the prophet gets of the 
Lord ; God in Christ glorious in holiness. He is in it, in the 
the altar of atonement and the live coals of the ever-fresh 
sacrifice of himself thereon. He is in it, in the instantaneous 
efficacy of one of the live coals from off the altar, applied by a 



88 ISAIAH S VISION. 

divine agency to the prophet's person, to cleanse him from 
all his guilt, and give him courage before the Lord. This 
Messianic character of the vision or ecstasy will appear more 
clearly if we consider : 

I. What Isaiah saw and heard (vers. 1-4). 
II. How Isaiah felt (ver. 5). 
III. How his case was met (ver. 6). 
IY. The subsequent offer and command (vers. 7, 8). 

I. What the prophet saw (vers. 1-4). There is no special 
stress to be laid on the term Lord, as used here. It is not 
the incommunicable name of essence, Jehovah ; but the title 
of dominion, of mastership and ownership, Lord. It is 
Jehovah who is seen • but he is seen as ruler, governor, king. 
The awe of his appearance is in the circumstances or sur- 
roundings. 

He is upon a throne, high and lifted up. It is the 
throne of absolute sovereignty ; of resistless, questionless, 
supremacy over all. The Lord reigneth ; thy throne, God, 
is for ever and ever. 

He is in the temple, where the throne is the mercy- 
seat, between the Cherubim ; over the ark of the covenant, 
which is the symbol and seal of reconciliation and friendly 
communion. And he is there in such rich grace and glory 
that the whole temple is filled with the overflowing robe of 
his redeeming majesty. His train, the skirts of his won- 
drous garment of light and love, filled the temple. 

Above, or upon, that ample overflowing train of so 
magnificent a raiment stood the Seraphim. These are not, as 
I take it, angelic or superangelic spirits, but the Divine 
Spirit himself, the Holy Ghost ; appearing thus in the aspect 
and attitude of gracious ministry. In that attitude he 
multiplies himself, as it were, according to the number and 
exigencies of the churches and the individuals to whom he 



ISAIAH'S VISION. 89 

has to minister. He takes up, moreover, the position of 
reverential waiting for his errand, and in an agency manifold, 
but y.et one, readiness to fly to its execution. For the 
ecclesiastical fancy or figment of Seraphim and Cherubim, as 
constituting a sort of hierarchy or prelacy in the heavenly 
hosts, may surely be regarded as now exploded. The Cheru- 
bim are on almost all hands admitted to be representative em- 
blems of redeemed creation, or of the redeemed church on the 
earth. And I cannot think it wrong to give to the Seraphim, 
in this, the only passage in which the name occurs, a some- 
what corresponding character, as representative emblems of 
the active heavenly agency in redemption. Nor is the plural 
form any objection. 

I find, as I think, a similar mode of setting forth the 
multiform and multifarious agency of the Spirit in the 
opening salutation of the Apocalypse. " John to the seven 
churches which are in Asia : Grace be unto you, and peace, 
from him which is, and which was, and which is to come ; 
and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne ; and 
from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful Witness, and the first- 
begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the 
earth " (Eev. i. 4, 5). John invokes the blessings of grace 
and peace upon the seven churches he is addressing. He 
does so in the usual apostolic manner. He brings in the 
three persons of the Godhead ; the Father first, " from him 
which is, and which was, and which is to come ;" the Son 
last, " from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful Witness, and 
the first-begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the kings of 
the earth ; " and between the two, " the seven Spirits which 
are before the Father's throne." It is the Holy Ghost, wait- 
ing to go forth from the Father, to apply and carry forward 
the threefold work of the Son, as prophet, priest, and king ; 
and to do so as if he were becoming seven Spirits in accom- 
modation to the seven churches ; as if each church was to 



90 

have him as his own ; yes, and each believer too. So the 
Holy Spirit appears to Isaiah in this seraphic host ; many, 
but yet one ; one, in the uniformity of the threefold posture ; 
the veiled face towards the glorious throne ; the veiled feet 
upon the gracious train ; the unveiled wings left ready for 
flight anywhere and on any mission. 

With this great sight voice and movement are joined. 
There is a voice. " And one cried unto another, and said, 
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts ; the whole earth is 
full of his glory." It is not necessarily the voice of the 
Seraphim, though that is the ordinary view. I would rather 
take the words abstractly aud indefinitely. There is a reci- 
procating, or, as it were, antiphonic cry or song. It is not said 
among whom. Of course the readiest reference is to the 
Seraphim. But the text does not require that ; it is literally 
" this cried to this " (marginal reading). And the attend- 
ance of an angelic quire, of all hosts of heaven, may be 
assumed. A voice of adoring awe fills the august temple 
with the echoing sound (ver. 3). The voice occasions com- 
motion, excitement, shaken door-posts, the smoke of the 
glorious cloudy fire filling all the house (ver. 4). 

Assuredly Christ is here. He is here as revealing the 
Father • the brightness of his glory, the express image of his 
person. And he is here, not merely outwardly, in outward 
manifestation ; but inwardly ; in the deepest inward contact 
and converse of the soul with God. 

I am carried within the veil ; within the veil of God's 
glory as declared in his visible works ; within the veil of my 
sensible recognition of that glory ; into the shrine, far back, 
beyond either veil ; where, face to face, I see, where, in a real 
personal interview, I personally meet my Lord ; the sovereign 
Lord of all ; God in Christ ; overflowing in redeeming love ; 
glorious in holiness ; filling the whole earth with the glory of 
his holiness. 



ISAIAH'S VISION. 91 

II. How the prophet felt (ver. 5). It is a thorough prostra- 
tion. The prophet, the seer of this great sight, is smitten 
down. He falls on his face as one dead. He cannot stand 
that Divine presence ; that living, personal, Divine presence ; 
abruptly confronting him in the inmost shrine of the Lord's 
sanctuary, and the sanctuary of his own heart. "What the 
Lord really is, thus flashing on his conscience, shows him 
what he is himself. Undone ! unclean ! Unclean in the 
very sphere and line of living in which I ought to be most 
scrupulously clean ! 

The lips ! — The lips which, like David in that Psalm of 
penitential sorrow, I have asked thee, Lord, to open that 
my mouth may show forth thy praise : the lips which I have 
consecrated as a sacrifice to thee ; the lips which should keep 
knowledge and feed many ; ah ! how unclean ! And how 
have I been reconciling myself to their uncleanness ; and to 
the uncleanness of the lips of the people among whom I 
dwell ! How have I been using my lips among them ! How 
have I been regarding their use of their lips among them- 
selves ! They say that their lips are their own. Have I been 
tempted to acquiesce in their saying that? Ay, and even 
sometimes to say it myself. In my intercourse with them, 
does my trumpet give an uncertain sound ? Is my speech, or 
my silent and tacit influence, accommodated to their ideas 1 
Am I ceasing to tell on them for good 1 Are they beginning 
to tell on me for evil % Do I dwell among them without 
being vexed by their evil conversation 1 Is my own conversa- 
tion, my way of thinking, speaking, acting, taking, almost half 
unconsciously, the unspiritual, ungodly, frivolous, and worldly 
tone of theirs ? 

Ah ! it is high time for me to place myself where Isaiah 
was, and to prostrate myself as Isaiah did. And let it not be 
as if this uncleanness of my own lips and tolerance of the un- 
cleanness of the lips of the world were a casual infirmity, 



92 ISAIAH'S VISION. 

an outward excrescence upon my character and life. All, 
no ! It is myself ; my very self ! I am a man of unclean 
lips ! The unclean lips constitute my very manhood, my very 
nature. They are the sign and index of what I am. It is 
not that I have them, hanging as an uncongenial burden 
around me. But I am what they express. They proceed out 
of my heart. They are what my inner man, my whole inner 
man, truly is. It is my nature that I feel to he so deeply, 
thoroughly, hopelessly vitiated. Not only are my lips unclean, 
I am myself a man of unclean lips ! That is my very nature. 
That is myself. Myself as I see myself, when mine eyes see 
the King, the Lord of Hosts. 

III. How the prophet's case is met. He is within the 
veil ; in the holiest sanctuary • the Holy of holies. He is in 
the immediate presence of the Holy One ; shining forth from 
between the Cherubim, over the mercy-seat, in the full glory 
of his sovereignty and grace \ the full- orbed and rounded 
glory of his holiness. And he is there, in that awful pre- 
sence, not as a prophet, a high and honoured functionary, 
awaiting the instructions of his royal Master, in dignified and 
reverential state ; but as a poor, wretched criminal, help- 
lessly lost and ruined ; undone ; unclean. 

But lo ! an altar ; the altar ; the altar of popitiation 
and atonement ; on which lies the ever freshly bleeding 
victim ; the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the 
world. There, full in his view, is that altar, with its sacrifice ; 
present to him then, though future ;• present, I thank God, 
to me, though past. There it is ; a great reality ; a great 
fact ! Yes ! It is there : altogether irrespectively of Isaiah's 
thoughts and feelings, — and of mine. It is there, apart from 
me ; in spite of me ; a fixed, accomplished fact ; a finished 
work ; a real, present altar ; a real present sacrifice ; accept- 
able to God and available for me ! That where I am, there 



ISAIAH'S VISION. 93 

that is, that altar with that sacrifice, is a gleam of light in 
the gloom. It is something to see the Saviour on the cross. 

But of what avail is that altar, with its ever-burning 
fire of sacrificial incense, to me 1 It is there, where I am. 
That is something ; it is much. But may it not be there, 
simply as near to God ; accepted of God 1 And here am I, 
alas ! a poor sinner, undone, unclean ; forced to own my deep 
and helpless far-offness from God. But lo ! thanks to ever- 
abounding grace, there is an agency at work that brings 
the great and ever fresh transaction of the altar freshly home 
to me. One of the Seraphim ; the Holy Spirit in one of his 
indefinitely varied modes of operation, suited to the diversities 
of churches and of individuals ; one of the Seraphim ; the 
Holy Spirit in that one particular adaptation of his ministry 
which specially meets my case ; flies, as if in haste ; seeing 
that I am fainting, and fearful lest I die ; flies on the wings 
ever ready for such flight ; flies with what is as good as the 
entire altar and its sacrifice, to apply it all effectually to me ; 
with a live coal in his hand taken with tongs from off the 
altar he flies to me. And knowing my sore better than I 
know it myself, not wandering vaguely and tentatively over 
my whole frame, but fixing at once on the seat of my distress ; 
he touches my lips ! My lips ! my unclean lips ! the very 
lips whose uncleanness is all but driving me to despair. The 
very part in me, the special sense of sin, that is causing me to 
cry out, " Woe is me ! wretched man that I am ! " he touches 
with that coal. And the coal not dead but living. It is a 
coal from off the altar whose victim ever cries, " I am he that 
liveth, and was dead ; and behold I am alive for evermore." 
With a living coal from that living altar, directly and imme- 
diately, the blessed Spirit touches me at the very point of my 
deepest self-despair. 

And the effect is as immediate as the touch. Nothing 
comes in between. There is no waiting, as for a medicine to 



94 ISAIAH'S VISION. 

work its cure ; no bargaining, as if a price were to be paid ; 
no process to be gone through ; no preparation to be made ; 
nothing conies in between. Enough that there are, on the one 
side, the unclean lips, and on the other the live coal from off 
the altar. To the one let the other be applied, graciously, 
effectually, by the sevenfold, myriad-fold, agency of the Spirit 
who is ever before the throne on high. The prophet asks 
nothing more. He feels the warm touch of the live coal from 
off the altar. He hears the voice, as of him who said, " Thy 
sins be forgiven thee." " Lo, this has touched thy lips, and 
iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged." 

Here let us pause, and ask grace to enable us to realise 
this experience as our own. 

1. Let me isolate myself, and be alone with God; alone 
with him within the veil. Let me see the Lord, not mediately, 
through his works and ways ; no, nor by means and signs and 
sacraments ; not by reasoning and reflection inferring him ; 
but by spiritual insight and intuition beholding him ; myself 
alone beholding him alone ! Let me be brought individually 
and personally face to face with him in the inmost shrine of 
his living personality. I saw the Lord ! Let me see the 
Lord. I have heard of him. I have thought about him. 
But let me see him. With eye opened by the Spirit let me 
see himself. Let me see him verily and indeed, as he is in 
himself and in his relation to me. Let his own beloved Son 
show him to me. Let him show to me the Father ! His 
Father and my Father in him ; awful and uncompromising in 
his sovereignty ; overflowing in the riches of his grace : holy, 
holy, serenely holy ; terrible ; glorious in holiness. Let it 
be a real true unveiling of him on the one part, — a real true 
seeing of him on the other. I see him ; " I have heard of him 
with the hearing of the ear ; but now mine eye seeth him. 
Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." 

2. So Job was smitten down ; emptied of all the right- 



ISAIAH'S VISION. 95 

eousness lie pleaded so nobly, against his gainsaying friends, 
but yet too unadvisedly in the sigbt of his God ; prostrated 
before the one only righteous and holy Lord God. So Isaiah 
cried, Woe is me, for I am undone. So let me be smitten ; so 
let me cry, blessed Spirit ; thou thyself opening my eyes and 
causing me to see the Lord on his throne, in his temple. 
Seeing the Lord ; sovereign in his power and grace ; holy, 
inviolably holy, in his nature and in all his relations ; seeing 
him, not afar off; not as if I gazed on some glimpse of his 
shining garment from a distance and among a crowd ; seeing 
him very near ; with a real true vision, making him a real 
true person to me, — and oh ! how holy ! — holy in his sove- 
reignty, holy in his love ! — oh, how holy ! — what can I do 1 
what can I say 1 Alone, in such a presence ! Woe is me ! 
Undone, Unclean ! Unclean all over ; out and out, through 
and through unclean. My lips unclean ; and all that they 
express unclean ; my whole inner man ; my entire inward 
moral and spiritual frame. I cannot open my mouth to utter 
a thought ; I cannot think a thought that might be uttered 
in words ; but there is uncleanness in it ; unholiness ; ungod- 
liness ; carnality ; selfishness ; worldliness. Holy Spirit ! 
Spirit of holiness ! Oh ! make me feel this uncleanness in my 
lips, as indicating my thoughts, but too congenial to the un- 
cleanness of the lips of others. Make me feel this confor- 
mity to the world to be no mere accident of my life, but my 
very nature. Let me see God as he is, that I may see myself 
as I am. Let the terrible contrast between his holiness and 
my uncleanness sink me almost in the very gulf of despair, 
as I cry, Woe is me ! for I am undone. " Then said I, Woe is 
me ! for I am undone ; because I am a man of unclean lips, 
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips : for mine 
eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts" (Isa. vi. 5). 

3. But no. It need not be despair. Blessed Spirit, Spirit 
of all grace, thou hast another sight to unveil to me ; another 



96 ISAIAH'S VISION. 

experience for me to undergo. Thou takest of what is Christ's, 
and showest it to me. Thou appliest it to me. Thou makest 
Christ mine. I see his glory : his glory as it shines in the 
lustre of that throne on which unbending sovereignty, rich 
redeeming grace, and unsullied holiness, sit enshrined before 
my wondering eye, all harmonized by him. I see also his 
glory, as it sheds its calm sad radiance on the altar on which 
he lies, the bleeding Lamb of God, the propitiation for my 
sin. Yes ; I see, as I doubt not Isaiah saw, his glory in that 
altar. Blessed Spirit ! let it be so. I see the glory of his cross. 
I see his glory as Jehovah- Jesus ; Immanuel ; God with us. 
I see his glory as made sin and made a curse for me. I see 
his glory as loving me, and giving himself for me. I see his 
glory, as it is ever freshly unfolded to me, — not a past, but an 
ever-present glory. Yes ; it is a present glory of Christ 
that I see ; present, blessed Spirit ! through thy gracious 
working. Thou makest it present to me. For I do not 
merely gaze on a past transaction in that altar, of terrible 
though loving signifieancy. I grasp in it a present saving 
benefit. I not only behold the altar ; I have fellowship with 
it. Thou, blessed Spirit ! makest me partaker of it. Thou 
bringest it near to me. Thou touchest me with it ; the sorest 
of my sores, the uncleanest of all my uncleannesses, thou 
touchest with it effectually. 

Tor thus, once more, I see the glory of Christ in the im- 
mediate cleansing of my lips, upon their being touched with a 
live coal from off the altar. Here especially I see his glory ; 
the glory of the sovereign and instantaneous virtue of the 
mere touch, on lips the most unclean, of a live coal from off 
the altar. For surely it is surpassingly glorious to see, to 
see by feeling it, how, without any process or any interval 
of preparation, the fire of the altar has but to come in contact 
with my deepest stain of depravity and guilt ; and I hear the 
voice, " Lo, this hath touched thy lips ; and thine iniquity is 



isaiah's vision. 97 

taken away, and thy sin purged." For, indeed, over all the 
seeings of Christ's glory here indicated this is paramount. 
This is the crowning sight of his crowning glory. To see his 
glory, as investing the eternal throne with a new halo of 
sovereignty and grace and holiness, blended in a new aspect 
of mingled majesty and mercy, on which the undone and 
unclean can look without utter ruin ; to see his glory, as erect- 
ing and setting forth an altar, on which there is ever freshly 
flowing the blood of an infinitely meritorious and efficacious 
sacrifice for sin ; to see his glory, as the Holy Spirit takes of 
what is his, — a live coal from off the altar, — and shows it by 
applying it to me ; touching the worst element in my case, with 
all the virtue of the altar whose coal he uses ; — all that is 
much. But more, if possible, more is it to see his glory in 
the electric word, " Lo, this hath touched thy lips • and 
thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." Ah ! 
this instantaneousness ; this instant flash from the two 
opposite poles, — the live coal from off the altar and my unclean 
lips, — issuing at once in perfect peace, and perfect willingness 
to be the Lord's ; — is not this, after all, the chief glory of 
Christ which Isaiah saw, and which I, in the Spirit, see as 
he saw % Oh ! what glory may I see in Christ, not only all 
through his manifestation to me of his wondrous grace, 
revealing the Father in his full perfection, and providing for 
my return and reconciliation \ but very particularly, in my 
sense and experience of the instantaneous efficacy of one 
look to him, one touch from him, to set me free from all 
my guilty fear and bondage, and put me in the way of 
rendering a free and filial and loyal service to him who loved 
me and gave himself for me. 

IY. The subsequent offer and command — "Also I heard the 
voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will 
go for us 1 Then said I, Here am I ; send me. And he 

H 



98 ISAIAH'S VISION. 

said, Go." Two things are noticeable here : the grace of God 
in allowing the prophet, thus exercised, to be a volunteer for 
service ; and the unreservedness of the prophet's volunteering. 

1. It is a signal instance of grace on the part of the Lord 
that I am allowed to be a volunteer. The Lord has a right, 
a dearly purchased right, to deal with me very differently. 
He might issue a peremptory command. He might utter his 
stern voice of authority, and at once order me. But he knows 
what is in man better than to treat thus the broken and 
relenting heart of one whom he has smitten by the brightness 
of his glorious holiness to the ground, and healed by the touch 
of his ever-living sacrifice of blood. He is considerate. He 
is generous. His servant is not coerced or constrained, as 
with bit and bridle. He has the unspeakable privilege and 
happiness of giving himself voluntarily, and, as it were, 
ultroneously, to the Lord, who willingly gave himself for him. 
He simply hears, or overhears, a conversation in heaven ; a 
question asked and waiting to be answered. 

It is an intimation, a hint, of work to be done, service to 
be rendered, a message or embassy to be discharged. No 
order is issued. No special call is addressed to him or to any 
one in particular. But can he hear the announcement un- 
moved ? Is not the statement of the fact enough for him ? 
The question, he might say, is not addressed to me. It is a 
consultation or conversation in heaven. It says nothing to 
indicate its being meant for me on earth. Surely it were 
better that an angelic spirit, one of the countless hosts 
crying, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," should 
undertake the task, whatever it may be, than I, but now 
undone, unclean, and scarcely yet able to realise the purging 
of my sin. But no. The Lord's servant recognises, and 
with deep gratitude feels, the Lord's gracious condescension 
in leaving it to him to make, as it were, the first move. I 
hear thee, Lord, saying, Whom shall I send ? I might shrink, 



ISAIAH'S VISION. 99 

I might hesitate, as a poor guilty sinner, whom a glance of thy 
holy eye slays. But cleansed and quickened by that live coal 
from off the altar, the altar on which I see thee ever freshly 
pouring out thy precious blood ; bought with a price ; bought 
to be thine, thine alone, I needs must say, Here am I ; send 
me. 

2. The unreservedness of that reply is wonderful. It is a 
reply in the dark, and without any hint or stipulation for 
light. Not a question is asked ; not a condition or stipulation 
annexed. It is not, " Send me if the work is to be easy; send 
me if the embassy is to be honourable ; send me if the issue 
of the errand is to be prosperous and successful.'' Nor is there 
anything like making terms, as for a suitable recompense of 
reward. There is no hanging back under the plausible guise 
of self-distrust. " If I can but persuade myself that I am 
adequate to the post ; if I dare but think that thou countest 
me qualified, then, Lord, send me." No such double-dealing 
is there here ; no such contingent faith, masking voluntary 
unbelief. It is no half-hearted purpose, conditional on circum- 
stances ; but the full, single-eyed heartiness of one loving 
much, because forgiven much, that breaks out in the frank, 
unqualified, unconditional self- enlistment and self-enrolment in 
the Lord's host, — " Here am I, send me." Hence, accordingly, 
the crowning proof and pledge of his conversion, his cleansing, 
his revival, his calling or commission. He now first learns, 
now for the first time, after he has committed himself beyond 
the possibility of honourable retractation or recall, what is 
the errand darkly indicated by the heavenly voice, Whom 
shall I send, and who will go for us 1 

At first there may be secretly the feeling that any mission 
on which such a master may send me must have in it the 
elements of intrinsic glory and assured triumph. But as it 
turns out it is far otherwise than that. The case is altogether 
the reverse. The mission is to be a mission of judgment. 



100 ISAIAH'S VISION. 

It is to be of a sternly retributive character. It is to seal the 
final condemnation of the people to whom it is addressed. 
The message may be in itself one of mercy ; the full and free 
proclamation of the gospel. But in my hands, at my voice, 
it is to have a hardening, and not a softening effect. Men's 
minds are to be judicially blinded ; their hearts are to be 
judicially hardened. It is no pleasant office that is to be 
discharged ; no smooth and smiling sea on which he who has 
been all but shipwrecked himself is thus to launch forth, on 
a cruise that, however well meant and well fitted for saving 
them, is to issue in the shipwreck of the entire fleet, infatuated 
and undone. 

But what then 1 Does the freshly-quickened volunteer 
withdraw his offer 1 or qualify it 1 or raise any question at all 
about it 1 Does he say — " Nay, but, Lord, this is more than I 
volunteered for ; more than I anticipated, or could well anti- 
cipate ; more than I would have felt myself warranted to 
undertake, if I had not been led on in the dark 1 I did not 
mean to commit myself to this." No. He simply asks one 
question ; a brief one ; comprised in three words — " Lord, how 
long 1 " It is a question indicating nothing like reluctance or 
hesitation ; no repenting of his offer ; no drawing back. He 
makes no claim to be released from his engagement. He 
craves no indulgence. For himself he has nothing more to 
say. It is only in the interest of his people, and out of deepest 
sympathy with them, that the irrepressible cry of piety and 
of patriotism bursts from his lips — " Lord, how long ? how 
long 1 " And all the satisfaction^ all the comfort, he gets, 
is distant and dark. It is but a faint streak of light that 
breaks the heavy gloom. The disastrous issue of his ministry 
is to last till the desolation is very thorough and complete. 
Down the stream of years and ages he is still to see the 
gospel message he has to bear becoming more and more a 
savour of death unto death to the people whom he warmly 



ISAIAH'S VISION. 101 

loves. Still there is always a remnant to be saved. There 
is an element of vitality in the root, and stem, and branch of 
David, that is indestructible. The plant may be cut down 
and cut over, again and again, ever so many times. But there 
is a holy and a living seed in it that will be ever and anon 
springing up in a holy and living growth ; partial indeed, and 
local j yet preparing the way for the final flourishing of the 
tree and the spreading of its branches over all the earth. 
Such hope, however limited and deferred, is enough for the 
gospel volunteer. He does not recall, virtually he repeats, 
his offer — " Here am I, send me." 

Here, and «by way of practical application, let me return 
back from the end to the beginning of this great evangelical 
experience. 

1. Do I find myself staggering at the call, Go ? Am I in- 
clined to draw back, to make difficulties, or yield to difficul- 
ties presented to me % Am I beginning to feel the Lord's 
work and warfare, for which I volunteered into his service, 
too slow or too hard 1 Am I growing weary, desponding ; 
formal and perfunctory, because heartless and hopeless, in 
my mission for Christ 1 Has that no connection with my own 
spiritual state ? May it not betoken a sad, and perhaps growing, 
unconcern about my own personal sanctification ? Am I not 
becoming insensible or indifferent to uncleanness, if not in act, 
yet in thought and speech ; my own uncleanness and the 
world's ? Ah ! when I cease to be thoroughly, out and out, 
a volunteer in the Lord's missionary army ; when my re- 
sponse to his summons is no longer altogether spontaneous 
and warm ; when I am discouraged by ill-treatment and ill- 
success ; when I am listless and weary ; let me look well 
to my own personal religious state. How is it with me as 
regards my own soul ; its thirst after God ; its recoil from all 
ungodliness 1 May there not be creeping over me a sort of 



102 isaiah's vision. 

carnal and worldly sloth 1 a willingness to connive at and 
tolerate evil ; in others perhaps first ; and then also in myself 1 

2. Does this discovery disquiet me ? Does it grieve me to 
find that I am less cordial in saying, " Here am I ; send me ; " 
because I am getting reconciled to things as they are, in my 
own lips, and the people's lips among whom I dwell 1 Let 
me suffer the Lord to bring me into a close, personal, solitary 
dealing with himself. Nothing short of that will meet my 
case. Let there be a process of enlightenment, conviction, re- 
vival; secret, deeply secret ; in the inmost shrine of his holy 
presence ; in the inmost shrine of my spiritually awakened 
soul. Let it be sight; faith becoming vision; enduring as see- 
ing him who is invisible, Immanuel, God with us. ~No 
name or notion merely ; but a real, living personality ; the 
Lord sovereign, living, holy ; showing himself to me ; speak- 
ing to me ; laying his holy hand on me, a sinner ! I am 
smitten down ! I see and feel the guilt of uncleanness ; my own 
and the people's. Especially I see and feel the guilt of my 
inclination to indulge, to tolerate, to treat it as a venial sin. 
Yes; so to treat that foul leprosy of uncleanness, disguising 
itself, it may be, under idle words. These very words con- 
demn me. I loathe myself on account of them, for they are 
my very self. In the awful presence of the Lord, sin is ex- 
ceeding sinful ; guilt is unbearable ; ruin is real, inevit- 
able, irreversible. There is an everlasting undoneness. Woe 
is me ! 

3. But let me not, blessed Spirit, let me not be faith- 
less but believing ! Let me not grieve or vex thee ! Thou 
not merely showest me the great altar of atonement, on which 
blood infinitely precious and sufficient to cleanse from all sin 
is ever freshly flowing. Thou touchest me, even me, unclean, 
unclean with all my own uncleanness, and all the unclean- 
ness, moreover, which I have suffered and encouraged in those 
whom I should have been influencing otherwise. Yes ! Thou 



ISAIAH'S VISION. 103 

touchest me! OK that I may willingly let thee touch me, 
— the uncleanest part of me, — with a drop of that precious 
blood ; — the least of the live coals from off the altar ! Then, 
blessed Spirit ! open my ear, that I may catch the sound of 
that gracious voice of thine. This has purged thy guilt ! that 
voice of thine so lovingly in harmony with what the victim 
on that altar was wont, in his own person, to say, Thy sins 
be forgiven thee. 

4. This is the best and only effectual preparation for serv- 
ing as a volunteer in the Lord's host : to love, because for- 
given ; to love much, because forgiven much. And it is so, 
not only at first, but always ; not only in the beginning of 
your Christian calling, but all throughout, to the very end. 
The experience must be continually renewed. And it may 
be so in either order. 

It may come in the way of there being first a personal 
awakening. It must so come at first ; and it may and will be 
so coming ever after. In your first conversion, or in some 
subsequent revival, your soul is stirred and moved to its very 
depths. It is a selfish concern, some would say. No ; it is 
a godly concern. It is concern about your own personal 
and individual state and character in God's sight. It is the 
urgent, personal question, What must I do 1 And it must 
be so always, as often as the Spirit causes you to experience 
a personal dealing between you and God most high, God 
most holy. Eut let such personal dealing, graciously involv- 
ing forgiveness of sin, issue always in the graciously instinc- 
tive cry, Here' am I ; send me. 

The case may be reversed. There is a voice heard, 
Whom shall I send, and who will go for us 1 Thou hearest 
it, as many hear it. There is work to be 'done for the Lord. 
In a stirring time there is a proclamation from heaven, and 
on earth, for men to offer themselves willingly for service. It 
comes home to thee. Thou art touched, raised, stimulated ; 



104 ISAIAH'S VISION. 

earnest also and enthusiastic ; thou holdest out thy hand for 
the badge of enlistment : Here am I. Far be it from me to 
repress thy desire to be useful in the Lord's cause ; to throw 
cold water on thy young and glowing ardour of soul. But in 
faithfulness to thee, as well as to the Lord, I must move the 
previous question : What of thyself 1 thine own individual 
self 1 Hast thou thyself seen the Lord for thyself, and been 
smitten, and touched, and healed, and revived, and cleansed, 
and purified 1 Is that thine own experience 1 now 1 ever 
freshly now 1 It would be cruel to encourage thee, if it is 
not, to be one of the Lord's volunteers. But why may not 
that be your experience now 1 Oh ! let the Spirit make it so 
now. Go into the secret place of thy God, and have peace. 

5. The errand on which thou art to be sent may be sent 
as to try thee to thy uttermost. Yes ; I may be sent on an 
errand of judgment ; to preach the Gospel ; but to preach it with 
the issue of men's hearts being hardened under it. I may be a 
savour of death unto death to many of the people whom I long 
to save. This thought made Paul exclaim, " Who is suffi- 
cient for these things ? " Ah ! who may say that, who may 
not also say, " Our sufficiency is of God 1 " How may I say 
that, if I am not always dwelling in his holy place, beholding 
his glory, and tasting his loving kindness ? From thence I 
ever come forth, acquiescing in that issue of my mission, what- 
ever may be its sphere, but beseeching all to lay to heart the 
terrible danger of being blinded by the light and deadened by 
the life that there is in the gospel which I preach. my 
friends ! let this danger be laid to heart by all of us. Let us 
hear the solemn warning, " To-day, while it is called to-day, 
harden not your hearts." 



FAITH GLOKIFYING GOD. 105 



VI. 
FAITH GLOKIFYING GOD. 

"Strong in faith, giving glory to God." — Romans iv. 20. 

The leading thought here is the connection of God's glory 
with our faith. And it is a great thought. God is glorified 
by our believing ; trusting ; taking his word. He is glorified 
by our faith ; by our simply believing his promise ; for that 
is no more than giving him credit for sincerity in the overtures 
of his mercy which he addresses to us, and his invitations to 
us to be fellow-workers with him. Having that faith, as the 
gift of God, we glorify him. And being strong in that faith, 
we glorify him all the more. 

To be glorifying to God, therefore, our faith must, I., have 
a promise on which to rest. II. It must rest on the promise 
in the right spirit of confidence in the person promising. 
And, III., it must be strong, or in the way of becoming 
strong. 

I. The faith in question, if it is to give glory to God, must 
have a promise of God to rest on. The faith of Abraham, 
like all genuine and trustworthy faith, has respect to a promise 
on which it may lean. Human faith, not resting on a divine 
promise, is either folly or fanaticism. Even in the natural 
world this is true. We walk by faith ; but it is by faith 
grounded on the promise which all nature, on the part of her 
great Author, gives ; the promise that nature's laws will 
operate, and her processes will go on, with the regularity 



106 FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. 

Htherto observed. Walking by faith, in that virtual promise, 
you walk safely. To be strong in that faith is good \ it is 
glorifying to God. But if, in your natural walk, you disregard 
that virtual promise, and rush into danger in spite of its con- 
ditions, the stronger your faith, the less is it either reason- 
able on your part as students of nature's laws, or glorifying to 
nature's God. Faith must always have a promise, express or 
implied, to grasp. The promise which Abraham's faith grasps 
in this instance is certainly one fitted to try his capacity of 
believing to the uttermost. The only thing that can be said 
on the side of lessening a difficulty is this — The promise which 
this faith had to grasp was both precise and definite in itself, 
and unmistakably pointed and personal in its application. 
There could be no room for doubt, either as to the exact 
thing promised, or as to the particular person to whom it 
was promised. 

Ah ! but one says, These are unspeakable advantages in the 
line of Abraham's faith being strong, as compared with mine. 
Show me a promise of the spiritual good which you wish me 
to appropriate, as specific in its terms, and as express in its 
personal application to me, as was the promise of a son by 
Sarah that Abraham got. I will take no exception to it on 
the ground of antecedent improbability. I will not scruple 
or hesitate for a moment. Let it be a very miracle that the 
promise involves, and a miracle ever so stupendous, I will 
believe, and need no one to help my unbelief. But you say 
— No such promise is given as the ground or warrant of faith 
to you. All that your faith has to lay hold of is quite vague 
and general ; consisting of indefinite assurances of grace ; 
most generous, indeed, and free • but not addressed to you 
individually, and not pointing out any unequivocal result to 
be realised as a palpable fact in your experience, such as Isaac's 
birth in that of Abraham. Let one promise, for the sake of 
distinct example, be singled out. Let it be the great gospel 



FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. 107 

promise to which Peter, on the day of Pentecost, referred 
— " I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh . . . and it 
shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of 
the Lord shall be saved." " Eepent, and be baptized every 
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, 
and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the pro- 
mise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar 
off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call " (Acts ii. 
17, 21, 38, 39.) Let the objection now taken be considered 
with reference to that. Put in plain terms, it amounts to this : 
If I were called by name as Abraham was ; if I were told that 
I was to be saved, as explicitly as Abraham was told that he 
was to have a son by Sarah ; and if my being saved were a 
matter as palpably ascertainable as was the birth of Isaac ; 
then the two cases — Abraham's and mine— would be parallel, 
and I might be expected to believe as he did. 

But consider (1), may not the words which our Lord puts 
into the mouth of Abraham himself be virtually applicable 
here 1 — " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will 
they be persuaded though one rose from the dead/' Is it clear, 
that if I am not now complying with the gospel call, ad- 
dressed to all sinners, and to me a sinner, I would comply 
with it more readily if it were addressed to me by name % 
that if I am now neglecting the great salvation, offered in free 
gift to all, and among the all to me, I would be more dis- 
posed to accept it, if it were offered to me by name 1 And 
again, if forgiveness of sin, reconciliation to God, renewal of 
nature, peace, holiness, hope, — if these and the like saving 
benefits are now felt to be so intangible that I cannot get 
hold of them, would it in any degree obviate the difficulty 
to have them all materialised, were that possible ; to have 
them made up into a material packet which my hand may 
handle, or a material host which my eye may see, or a material 
wafer which my mouth may swallow 1 Let me not deceive 



108 FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. 

myself. Let me not imagine that if I believe not now, it is 
the circumstances of my position, or the character of the pro- 
mise, or the conditions of the faith required, or anything else 
than my own evil heart of unbelief that is in fault. Called 
by name, I might, and I would, refuse as now ; for the real 
reason of my refusal would remain in force then as now ; " Ye 
will not come unto me that ye might have life." A calling 
by name would not make me willing. Assured by name, I 
might, and I would, decline it as now. What is there in my 
being so assured by name to make the salvation more wel- 
come, more precious, more indispensable to me, than now? 
And as regards the last ground of difficulty, the intangible 
nature of its blessings, supposing even that I got them em- 
bodied in some sensible shape or sign, it would be the em- 
bodiment alone that became mine. The blessings embodied 
would seem as shadowy as ever. Be not deceived. Be sure 
that the call is personal and pointed enough. Thou, brother, 
art called, and so am I. The promise is to thee and to me. 
The salvation is for thee and for me. And it is to be realised 
experimentally in thee as in me. Let us together taste and 
see that God is good. Let us not dream of our being more 
able or more willing somewhere else than here, or some time 
else than now. Here and now, let us be willing, in the day 
of the Lord's power ; willing to be the Lord's. 

Again (2), understand clearly the real ultimate object 
of faith of Abraham. It had, for its immediate object, the 
promise of the birth of a son in his old age. But surely 
when Abraham believed that promise, he did not contemplate 
the event to which it pointed, barely and baldly in itself. He 
looked at it in its spiritual signincancy • in its bearing on the 
fulfilment of the great original promise of man's redemption, 
which he had been told was to be fulfilled in his seed. But 
for that aspect of it, the promise which he now received could 
really have no meaning to him. There could be no sense in 



FAITH GLOEIFYING GOD. 109 

it. In a worldly point of view, what need has he of this 
child, for whose birth the very laws of nature are to be sus- 
pended ? For his own temporal prosperity, for the preserva- 
tion of his name and memory on the earth in a numerous and 
powerful posterity, abundant provision has been made already. 
Why should this new and strange thing be wrought, as if a 
mere prodigy, a sport of nature, were intended, and nothing 
more 1 It cannot, it must not be. So Abraham might have 
reasoned, according to the flesh. But not so in the Spirit. 
The promise is to him the promise of salvation. It is not 
merely that a son is to be born to him, as it were out of due 
time. In that son, in whom his seed is to be called, he is to 
behold the Saviour of men, and his own Saviour. In him, 
he is to see the day of Christ afar off with gladness. The 
outward event which God's promise indicates, and Abraham's 
faith accepts, is but the crust or shell. What Abraham, be- 
lieving, really grasps, is the inner substance or kernel : the 
promised Saviour, and the promised salvation. For it is not 
merely as a new interposition of the power of God on his be- 
half that Abraham expects the birth of Isaac. No ; but as 
the means of the accomplishment of that assurance in Para- 
dise, on which he, in common with all sinners of our fallen 
race, rests all his hope of being saved — " The seed of the 
woman shall bruise the head of the serpent." 

Viewed thus, Abraham's faith really differs in no material 
respect from that which you are called to exercise. He has 
no promise on which his faith may lean, in the least degree 
more special and personal than you have ; and what his faith 
has to lay hold of is the same unseen Saviour, and the same 
spiritual salvation that you have set before you in the Gospel. 
When he believes the promise of this supernatural birth of 
Isaac spiritually apprehended, he does the very same thing 
which you have to do, when you believe the promise, " Who- 
soever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved ; " 



110 FAITH GLOKIFYING GOD. 

on the very same warrant also, the same, and nothing else, 
and nothing more. He renounces all confidence in the flesh. 
He lets Ishmael go, although once he had been fain to look 
to him for what he needed ; " Oh ! that Ishmael might live 
before thee." So he himself wonld have chosen to live by 
sense ; a son, as it were, in hand being better than a son in 
promise. But he does not so choose now. He submits him- 
self to the righteousness of God. He embraces, in faith, as 
a sinner, the righteous Saviour yet unborn. He deals, as you 
have to deal, with an unseen Christ. And, simply relying, 
as you may rely, on the testimony of God concerning him 
who is to be his seed in Isaac, he believes, and righteous- 
ness is imputed to him. " Now, it was not written for his sake 
alone, that it was imputed to him : but for us also, to whom 
it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus 
our Lord from the dead ; who was delivered for our offences, 
and was raised again for our justification" (vers. 23, 24, 25). 

Hence (3), Abraham's case becomes now really ours. It 
is the same faith in which he was strong that you are called 
to exercise. The promise is the same to you as to him. 
You and he are in the same position. Or, if there is any 
difference, the advantage, in point of fact, is with you. 
Abraham had presented to him, as the immediate object 
of his faith, an event future and contingent ; conditional 
upon certain necessary antecedents (vers. 19, 20). You have 
presented to you, as the immediate object of your faith, an 
event past and certain ; an accomplished fact (ver. 24). 

What he had to believe was the birth of Isaac. What 
you have to believe is the resurrection of Christ. The miracle 
with which his faith had to deal was still in prospect, and, as 
it were, in the clouds, when, against all calculations of proba- 
bility, he was called upon to admit and act upon it. The 
miracle with which your faith has to deal is a recorded and 
well-attested incident in history. It is that miracle which 



FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. Ill 

you have to receive, and to work out to its legitimate, prac- 
tical, and personal conclusion. 

Isaac is to be born ; and in him is to be found the seed 
of the woman that is to bruise the serpent's head : that is 
Abraham's ground of hope. Christ is risen ; the seed of 
woman ; having actually bruised the serpent's head : that 
is yours. These are the two outward and literal matters of 
fact which Abraham and you have respectively to receive 
and grasp as the grounds of that inward spiritual confidence 
and hope which alone is honouring to God. Surely, in this 
view, your warrant of faith is not less than was that of 
Abraham. On the whole, is it not true, and clearly true, that 
you have at least as good reason, and as much cause, to be 
strong in faith as Abraham had 1 

II. This raises the second question : What is the sort of 
faith which is to be exercised upon the promise ? It must 
be such as will be glorifying to God. Generally, it is true 
that to be strong in faith is glorifying to God. It is so, 
however, when my faith is the result of a directly personal 
dealing, on my part, with God ; when it is a real personal 
transaction between him and me. To be glorifying to God 
at all, my faith, whether weak or strong, must be faith in his 
veracity; in his truth and faithfulness ; in his mere and simple 
word ; in himself. It is to believe what he says, simply be- 
cause he says it ; because it is he who says it. No other sort 
of faith, no faith resting on any other ground, can be glorify- 
ing to him. I may believe many things concerning God upon 
evidence which approves itself to my natural reason, my con- 
science, my heart. I may believe many things revealed by 
God because they commend themselves to my sense of what 
is true, and fair, and reasonable, and right. I may construct, 
or I may embrace, a theology, both natural and revealed, 
which shall be thoroughly correct and sound in itself, and 



112 FAITH GLOKIFYING GOD. 

therefore, as to the matter of it, in harmony with God's 
glory ; which yet, so far as I, the author of it, or the receiver 
of it, am concerned, is not glorifying to God, but the reverse. 
For it may be a theology in which I deal with him, not as a 
person, but very much as a thing. God is to me, if not a 
bare name, yet, at the best, a notion ; an idea ; a conception ; 
a sort of abstract term in a scientific or algebraic formula. I 
make out, by a kind of mental manipulation ; by formal logic 
or reasoning; his existence and some of his attributes. I 
prove, demonstratively, that he is ; and that he is so and so ; 
and must act, and does act, so and so. I elaborate in this way 
a whole system of law and government, which I can establish 
in argument, and which I can defy any one to overthrow. 
There is faith ; strong faith. Eut is it glorifying to God ? In 
being thus strong in faith, do I glorify God % 

My faith, if it is to be glorifying to God, must have its 
root and source and origin in a real and actual personal deal- 
ing between him and me. He and I must meet personally, 
face to face ; as truly as he and Abraham met personally, face 
to face. We must — let it be said with reverence — we must 
know one another; understand one another; trust one an- 
other. No other kind of faith than that can be glorifying, 
pleasing, honouring, to him who is its object ; be he human 
or divine. What ! Shall I be contented that a member of 
my family should go about to satisfy himself by evidence from 
hearsay, or from circumstances ; by listening to how men out- 
side talk of me ; or by watching and weighing some of my own 
outside movements, and some even of my recorded utterances 
and writings ; as to the opinion he should form of my character, 
and the measure or extent to which he should conform his 
own conduct to what he can thus gather of my purposes and 
plans % Is that a sort of faith which I can feel to be either 
complimentary or kind 1 Does it do me any honour ? Can 
it yield me any gratification 1 Is it not, on the contrary, if 



FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. 113 

not an insult and offence, a sore and bitter disappointment 
and mortification to me 1 For does it not show that I am 
held to be, not a friend, or father, who may be fondly re- 
sorted to, that I may be trusted and consulted ; but an enemy 
who must be watched, in order to be evaded, or, at the best, 
a suspected stranger, about whom and about whose movements 
it may be desirable to be informed ; not that he may be ear- 
nestly sought after, but that he may be decently and safely 
shunned 1 I may be to one so regarding me an object of 
faith ; and of strong faith. He may have a strong belief and 
sense of my existence, and of those attributes and ways of 
mine that make my existence a fact to which he must some- 
how contrive to accommodate himself, if he can, or else be 
miserable. The strength of his faith in me, such as it is, may 
thus prompt the maddest and most convulsive efforts to come 
to terms with me. Or it may plunge him in angry despair 
when these efforts seem to fail. If I were a devil, I might 
count such faith to be gratifying and glorifying to me. It 
is in some such sense that, as regards God, the devils them- 
selves believe and tremble. 

But the faith which might be acceptable to devils ; the 
faith of which devils are capable ; is not the faith which can 
be glorifying to God. To be strong in such faith as that can- 
not give glory to God. ISTo. 

If I am so to believe, and so to be strong in faith, as 
to give glory to God ; my believing, my strong faith, must 
proceed upon, it must be the fruit of, my acquainting myself 
with him. " They that know thy name will put their trust in 
thee." That, and that alone, is the faith to be strong in which 
can be glorifying to God. Yes ; it must be faith grounded on 
my knowledge of his name. And the knowledge must be 
direct, immediate, personal ; not my knowing about him • but 
my knowing himself. Abraham believed God. God spoke 
to Abraham, and Abraham believed God. God, the living, 

I 



114 FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. 

personal God, the I AM, speaks to you ; lie personally to you 
personally. 

True, there is not in your case a visible divine presence, 
an audible divine voice. There is interposed between God and 
you a messenger crying, Thus saith the Lord ; or a book, out 
of whose varied and miscellaneous contents you have to 
gather for yourselves, often indirectly, sometimes with diffi- 
culty, what the Lord says. Still it is neither with the mes- 
senger, nor with the book, that you, in believing, have to do. 
It is not the trustworthiness of the message ; it is not the 
authenticity or the inspired and infallible truthfulness of 
the book, that your faith ultimately grasps. You must indeed 
satisfy yourselves, on good grounds, that the messenger is 
trustworthy ; that the book is true. But that is only the pre- 
liminary process. "When you have arrived at that conclusion, 
you are still only on the threshold. The messenger, the book, 
must be allowed to introduce you to God himself. You 
must be as a little child j as the child Samuel, saying, " Speak, 
Lord, for thy servant heareth." Then, only then, are you in a 
position really to believe so as to give glory to God. Then, 
out of the mouth of babes and sucklings God hath perfected 
praise. 

be sure that this is a capital, a most cardinal, a vital 
point, as regards the essence of vital godliness, and the place, 
and power of faith in connection with it ! Let me insist upon 
the point. Let me bring you this day, here and now, face to 
face with your God. 

Let me bring you, — did I say 1 Nay, there is One nearer 
to you, to every one of you, than I, or any messenger, or any 
book, can ever be. 

Why has he who at sundry times and in divers manners 
spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, in these 
last days spoken unto us by his Son] Why is that Holy Spirit 
who is even now moving in you, sent forth to testify of him ? 



FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. 115 

What is it that the Son and the Spirit would have you 
even now to be doing] To be seeing the Father : to be hear- 
ing the Father : to know the Father : to believe the Father : 
to know and believe the love wherewith he loves you. Oh ! 
come, and appear every one of you personally before God. It 
is not some one telling you something about God, but God 
himself, that you are to believe, if your believing is to give 
glory to God. Oh ! let there be no mistake, no misgiving 
here. Let no notion of anybody, or anything whatever being 
to be believed come in between you and your believing God, 
and so giving glory to him. 

III. But what about being strong in faith 1 ? It is not 
simply believing, but being strong, or being strengthened, in 
faith, that gives glory to God. Abraham not only believed 
God, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God. Now, in 
considering what it is to be strong in faith, we must bear in 
mind the Lord's own saying — " If ye have faith as a grain of 
mustard seed, . . . nothing shall be impossible with you." 
The woman with an issue of blood, who could but summon 
courage to touch the hem of the Lord's garment, and when 
called into his presence, came fearing and trembling, was 
apparently not strong in faith. And yet her faith did a great 
thing for her. It availed for her immediate and thorough 
cure : " Thy faith hath made thee whole." This woman be- 
lieved God. She believed him who, as God with us, has power 
on earth to heal all manner of diseases and to forgive sins. 
She had heard him often say in words, and more emphatically 
than in words, by deeds, " I will; be thou whole." He was say- 
ing it then, for he was going to heal the daughter of Jairus. 
In those blessed feet bent on that gracious errand, in that face 
of tenderness and pity, the woman read the words which every 
sick and weary one might read for himself, for herself, always 
there, " I will ; be thou whole." , And she believed him. 



116 FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. 

She believed that he meant what he said, when to every sufferer 
who drew near to him, to every sufferer whom he saw, to 
herself as suffering — ah ! how sorely — he said, "I will ; be thou 
whole." Surely God in his Son was greatly glorified through 
that trembling woman's faith. Was she then, after all, this 
daughter of Abraham, like Abraham himself, strong in faith 1 
Is it being strong in faith to say, as she said within herself, 
" If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole" 1 I think 
it is such faith as that, such a believing of the Lord, such 
immediate, personal, dealing with the Lord, knowing him for 
herself, apprehending him for herself ; even such trembling 
faith as hers, bringing her into contact and union with the 
Almighty and All-loving One, that puts all his power and love 
in operation on her behalf, and so is really strong. 

For let us well observe what the apostle means when he 
speaks of being strong in faith, so as to give glory to God ; 
strong, in what sort of faith ? and strong in it, how 1 Here 
the context may guide us. For the strength of this faith, as 
the preceding and following verses plainly teach, consists : 
negatively, in not considering what sense may urge against 
the promise ; and positively, in a full persuasion and assur- 
ance of the ability of the promiser to make good his word. 

Negatively, it is not considering what sense may urge 
against the promise (vers. 19, 20). If he had considered or re- 
garded these things, Abraham would have been weak in faith. 

And yet he might have considered these things, with at least 
as much reason or excuse as you have for considering such 
difficulties and objections as you are often apt to find, or 
tempted to conjure up, when you are asked to believe God. 

Certainly, they were formidable obstacles that had to be 
overcome by a miracle of power upon him, and by what we 
might well call a miracle of faith within him. Everything in 
his condition and in his experience, everything that he could 
see and know and feel, in nature and in himself, was against 



FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. 11 7 

his believing. And what had he on the other side for be- 
lieving 1 Simply God speaking ; God promising. That, 
however, prevailed. If it had not, he would have been weak 
in faith. And he might have staggered at the promise of God 
through nnbelief. He might have staggered. The word is 
well chosen. He might have been divided in judgment ; 
distracted ; not able, on the one hand, to ignore, or set at 
nought, the promise of God ; and yet not able, on the other 
hand, to disregard the obstacles in the way of its fulfilment. 
The result of such a balance of forces is distraction, stagger- 
ing; between the promise, not altogether disowned and dis- 
believed, and the difficulties too much considered. But 
Abraham was strong in faith. And his being strong in faith 
consisted, to a large extent, in his not considering the things 
which stood in the way of what he had to believe. 

This is a merely negative element of the strength of faith ; 
not considering ; not regarding. And it may seem to be 
taking low ground, and even unsafe ground, to say that a man 
is strong in faith, with regard to any result to be achieved, 
merely because he does not consider the difficulties of the 
enterprise. But it is not so. Eor we must distinguish this 
" not considering " these difficulties from the mere shutting of 
the eyes to the fact of their existence. I may be so bent 
upon the attainment of an object of desire as unconsciously to 
overlook all intervening obstacles, and fondly persuade myself 
that what I wish must be possible, simply because I wish it. 
Or I may be so impatient, venturous, foolhardy, as to be 
wilfully blind to everything but the gratifying of my heart's 
desire. To be strong in some such faith as that is not at all 
uncommon or unnatural. It is the strength or courage of 
mere blind animal impetuosity, that, with visor down and 
lance in rest, runs a tilt at all and sundry. Not such was the 
faith of Abraham. He had full in view the obstacles in the 
way of the promise. And this was the very strength of his 



118 FAITH GLOKIFYING GOD. 

faith, that, having them full in view, he disregarded them ; 
he did not consider them. They were of no account with him. 
And why 1 God spoke ; and he believed. 

Ah ! these difficulties, questions, objections ; these sug- 
gestions and surmises of sense : I am too old, and my wife is 
too old ; I am too far gone, and she is too far gone ; for con- 
version, for life, for fruitfulness. How am I ever to get over 
them *? I must ignore them. I must banish them from my 
consideration if I am to be strong in faith. And may I not 
ignore them 1 banish them from my consideration 1 Am I 
not warranted to do so 1 Nay, is it not weakness to consider 
them, if I have faith at all ; if I have anything at all of that 
faith which is really glorifying to God 1 Let me grasp and 
hold fast the thought that I am face to face with my God. 
Do I really hear him speaking to me 1 Is there a real per- 
sonal communication from him to me 1 And is it with such 
a communication from him to me ; or rather with himself, as 
thus in communication with me, that I have to do ? 

What means, in such circumstances, my staggering, my 
distraction, my staggering, and being distracted, between what 
he says or promises, and what may seem, and may really be, 
most opposed to it, in myself, or in all the world 1 The 
weakness of faith is to be considering your own body now 
dead, and the deadness of your Sarah's womb. It is that 
which makes you a staggering believer ; staggering as a be- 
liever through unbelief, and soon staggering into unbelief 
altogether. 

Alas ! how is faith weakened and made to stagger by your 
considering what sense says or suggests against it. In every 
department, in every walk of the spiritual life, is it not so ? 

Am I called, as a poor guilty sinner, to believe in the 
Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of all my sins and my peace with 
God? God himself is telling me, not of a child to be born, but 
of the Child actually born ; and not of his birth merely, but of 



FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. 119 

his wondrous life and death ; and of his rising from the dead, 
and reigning, and receiving the Spirit to give, to give to me, 
and coming once again to receive me to himself. God him- 
self is telling me of this Christ, in his gospel, by his 
Spirit. He is telling me of this Christ as mine, if I will but 
have him to be mine. Alas ! I give heed to considerations 
that seem to make all this impossible in my case. I am not 
worthy enough, or vile enough. I have not repentance 
enough, or faith enough. I see not how certain difficulties are 
to be solved, and certain apparent contrarieties, as of my elec- 
tion of grace and my voluntary choice, are to be reconciled. I 
will not, I cannot, make up my mind absolutely to reject 
Christ. But I waver and vacillate ; I stagger at the promise 
through unbelief. I stagger into unbelief. Is this giving glory 
to God % 

As regards a holy life, this evil is sorely felt ; the evil 
of my considering what is against it, so as to stagger at the 
promise of God that should make it mine. Ah ! how am I 
tempted here to consider my own deadness ; and so to con- 
sider it, as to put up with it, and make allowance for it ; as 
if the quickening of it were scarcely, in any other than a very 
faint and feeble manner, to be expected or sought 1 How 
staggering is my walk through unbelief. How apt am I to 
dwell on infirmities and hindrances ; how ready to acquiesce in 
what I am, as if it were all I might be. Alas ! for this con- 
sidering of what hinders, to the neglect of what might help 
my growth in grace and in the knowledge of Christ Jesus my 
Lord. How does it interfere with my giving glory to God ! 

For others, as well as for myself, my faith is to be ex- 
ercised. I plead with God for a child, a brother, a friend. 
I have promises to plead. God himself is encouraging me to 
plead them. I spread out before God the case of my beloved 
one ; I would have God to deliver, convert, save him. I know 
that God would have me to seek his deliverance, conversion, 



120 FAITH GLOEIFYING GOD. 

salvation. Ah ! can it be that here too I am hindered by my 
considering the suggestions of sense, and giving heed to diffi- 
culties and questions respecting his deadness and mine ? Am 
I straitened 1 Do I stagger ? Are my prayers for my soul's 
darling vacillating, hesitating, halting 1 Am I dwelling, even 
when I pray for him, on the improbability and difficulty of 
his getting the good for which I pray? Is not my weak faith 
fast staggering into unbelief 1 Am I not teaching and habi- 
tuating myself to become reconciled to his loss ? and if to his, 
ah ! why not to my own 1 ? 

For the seed of Abraham • for him who is the seed of 
Abraham, and for all that is his ; his cause and kingdom ; his 
church and people ; the progress of his gospel ; the winning 
of souls to him ; for all that, I am commanded to believe 
God. Alas ! for my weakness in this faith. How do I con- 
sider the mountains that are in my way ! How easily do I come 
to the conclusion that they are insurmountable ; or at least 
that the surmounting of them is not to be looked for now ; or 
not to any considerable extent ; or not by means of such 
agency of mine ! In the work of the Lord I stagger. It is 
my weakness in the faith becoming unbelief. 

For all this staggering, as regards either my own stand- 
ing in the sight of God, or my progress in holiness, or 
my pleading for a beloved one, or my interest in the cause 
and work of the Lord ; for all this unsteadfastness of weak 
faith, ever running into unbelief, the remedy is to be found, 
at least in part, in the negative way of not considering the 
difficulties which sense may raise. And it is not unreasonable 
to ask you to cease from considering them. For you are called 
to believe God in the matter to which they relate. To bid you 
disregard them on any other ground would be vain. And 
accordingly, when such difficulties really distress you ; as for 
instance, especially, when the question of your personal 
interest in Christ and his salvation is raised ; and you are 



FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. 121 

inclined to give heed to the objections and scruples and ques- 
tions which your guilty conscience and your doubting heart 
are sure to suggest ; and to hesitate and hang back until you 
are satisfied upon every point upon which a scruple may be 
raised ; I would not meet you with argument. I would carry 
you at once to God, and desire you to hear and to believe him. 
I would have you to be no more solicitous as to how you, so 
great a sinner, can be saved, than Abraham was, as to how he, 
so old a man, could be a father. I would exhort you to be like 
him, who, being not weak in faith, considered not his own body 
now dead ; neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb ; and 
therefore staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief. 
For now, positively, notice what, as the apostle explains 
it, being strong in faith really is. It is simply being fully 
persuaded " that what he had promised he was able also 
to perform." (ver. 21). Nay, but who doubts that ? you 
ask. I at least never dream of calling in question the 
omnipotence of God. I perfectly well know, and am firmly 
convinced, that what he has promised he is able also to per- 
form. And yet I see not how that knowledge and conviction 
will of itself make me, or any man, strong in faith. Very 
true, friend. To believe that God is omnipotent, how- 
ever strongly, with whatever full persuasion, when that belief 
is the mere admission of a dogma in theology, a general truth 
or proposition, proved by reason and affirmed in Scripture ; so 
to believe and be fully persuaded and assured that what God 
has promised he is able also to perform ; will go but a little 
way towards strengthening or establishing you in that faith 
which glorifies God. But let me again remind you that the 
faith in question is believing God ; not believing something 
about God, but believing God. It is a personal dealing of God 
with you, and of you with God. He and you come together ; 
he to speak, you to hear ; he to promise, you to believe ; you 
to ask, he to give. 



122 FAITH GLOKIFYING GOD. 

Ah. ! in that view it is something, it is much, it is every- 
thing, to be fully persuaded that what he has promised he 
is able also to perform : and that, at the very moment when 
God is dealing with you, and you with God ; and with refer- 
ence to the very matter about which God is dealing with 
you, and you with God ; be that matter what it may, per- 
taining to your own acceptance and peace, or growth in 
grace and deliverance from evil ; or to the conversion and 
salvation and well-being of those you love ; or to the advance- 
ment of the cause you have at heart. Whatever it may be 
that comes up, in this real personal dealing of God with you 
and of you with God ; whatever on his part in the way of 
admonition, or correction, or discovery, or encouragement, or 
consolation ; whatever on your part of sin and weakness 
and want and woe : it is a blessed thing to remember 
that it is the Almighty who speaks to you ; that it is the 
Almighty who bids you speak to him 1 ye of little faith, 
wherefore do you doubt? Is anything too hard for him who 
asks you to believe him % Is anything impossible with him 1 
When it is with him and with his promises that you are 
dealing, can you ask or expect anything too great, or too 
high? 

Oh ! come, my brother, be confronted with thy God, face to 
face with him. Be alone with thy God ; Jesus bringing thee 
near to him ; the Spirit moving between thy God and thee. 
How canst thou then and there, here and now, best honour 
him and give him glory 1 How but by being fully persuaded, 
and in thy dealings with him proceeding on the full per- 
suasion, that what he promises he is able also to perform 1 
Eemember that it is with none other than the Omnipotent 
that thou art invited to be at home ; it is in none other than 
the Omnipotent that thou art called to confide. Take any 
promise of his within the range of this blessed book. Take 
it in its highest reach and widest sweep. Plead it for thyself 



FAITH GLORIFYING GOD. 123 

and thine. Plead it for himself and his. Plead it, in the 
full persuasion that no difficulties such as sense might consider 
can stand in the way of its accomplishment ; for what he has 
promised, what he promises, he is able also to perform. Be 
strong in this faith, giving glory to God. 

For really, after all, it is faith in God's power that most 
glorifies him ; it is distrust of his power which lies at the root 
of most of the unbelief that is so dishonouring to him. Especi- 
ally is this the case sometimes with earnest souls ; souls that 
would be ashamed of calling in question the willingness of God 
to meet their case ; but yet somehow harbour the fear of their 
case being so bad that even God cannot meet it. " If thou 
canst do anything," we are apt to say, with the afflicted father. 
Let us ponder the gracious answer, " If thou canst believe, all 
things are possible to him that believeth." And let us enter 
into the spirit of the gracious reply, " Lord, I believe, help 
thou mine unbelief." 

In conclusion, let me beseech you to lay to heart the 
ground on which the duty of believing, and believing strongly, 
is here put. It is that it gives glory to God. It is not that 
it gives peace to the conscience, and joy to the heart, and 
salvation to the soul ; but that it gives glory to God. To be 
weak in faith is not merely to miss or mar a privilege, but to 
commit a sin ; not merely to injure yourselves, but to dis- 
honour the God whom you are bound to glorify. It is an 
insult and offence to him. To be dwelling on objections, 
hindrances, difficulties, as mountains standing in the way of 
his free word of promise ; to be distrusting his ability to 
sweep them all away, and make his word of promise good ; — 
can anything be imagined more fitted to affront the Almighty 
God, the Amen, the faithful, true, and loving Jehovah 1 ? 
Is it not literally and truly making him a liar 1 friends ! 
beware of so great a sin. Think not that doubt, hesitancy, 
uncertainty, whether as regards your own acceptance of his 



124 FAITH GLOEIFYING GOD. 

mercy, or as regards your giving yourselves to his service, and 
becoming fellow-workers with him for the good of others, 
can ever be looked upon by him in any other light than as 
doing him the greatest possible dishonour ; refusing to believe 
his testimony ; in plain terms, giving him the lie ! You may 
fancy that there is humility in it ; that your bashfulness and 
timidity have a certain air of becoming self-abasement. You 
feel your own unworthiness and unsteadfastness so deeply 
that- you dare not venture to be too confident or to presume ! 
Presume ! — The presumption is all the other way ! The in- 
tolerable presumption is to refuse to take God at his word, 
and believe that he means what he says when he bears this 
testimony that he giveth you eternal life, and that this life is 
in his Son • and when he adds the assurance that his grace is 
sufficient for you. It is presumption most dishonouring to 
the Lord, in the face of that assurance, to be considering any 
thorn in the flesh, however sharp, or doubting that strength 
of his which is made perfect in weakness. Brethren, be 
clothed with humility. And that you may be clothed with 
humility, be not faithless but believing. Be strong in faith, 
giving glory to God. 



ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 125 



VII. 

ENDUBING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 

" By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king : for he 
endured, as seeing him who is invisible." — Hebeews xi. 27. 

This is said of Moses with, reference to the second instance 
of his faith here celebrated. The first was a very searching 
trial and signal triumph of faith ; all the more because the event 
entailed deep disappointment and prolonged delay. Now, after 
forty years of exile, he has again taken his stand as Israel's 
champion. Now he finally forsakes Egypt. He stands 
before Pharaoh for the last time. Till now, there has been 
room for hope of some adjustment. The tyrant has shown 
repeated signs of relenting. But now, all that is over. 
" The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let 
them go. And Pharaoh said unto him, Get thee from me ; 
take heed to thyself ; for in that day thou seest my face, 
thou slialt die. And Moses said, Thou hast spoken well, I 
will see thy face no more " (Exod. x. 27). So Moses endured. 
He did not abandon his purpose of leading Israel, out of 
Egypt. He did not fear the wrath of the king, whose hosts, 
as he could not but foresee, might yet pursue the fugitives 
with all but resistless power, and overwhelm them in ruin 
before a place of safety could be reached. He endured, as 
seeing, not Pharaoh but one greater than Pharaoh ; him who 
is invisible. 

I propose to consider, I. what this quad-vision, this seeing, 



126 ENDUKING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 

as it were, in a sense, him who is invisible, really is ; and 
II. how it helps one who believes to endure. I say one who 
believes. For it was by faith that Moses endured, as seeing 
him who is invisible. 

I. What, then, is this virtual seeing of him who is in- 
visible 1 Jesus says of him that loveth him, " I will love 
him, and will manifest myself unto him." How? asks 
Thomas. " If a man love me, he will keep my words," is the 
reply. So, while the world sees me no more, ye see me ; the 
Holy Ghost teaching you all things, and bringing all things 
to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you ; all 
my sayings which you lovingly keep. May not this conver- 
sation throw some light upon the inquiry — What is this see- 
ing 1 Moses seeing, as it were, or feeling as if he saw, 
him who is invisible ? One thing, at all events, is very 
clear. The object of it is a person, a real and living person. 
And it is a person who has entered into personal dealing with 
Moses : a person whom Moses personally knows ; whose 
personal acquaintance Moses has made. That is a vital point. 
It has been made matter of doubt how far it is possible for 
man's finite understanding to take in any clear or distinct 
conception of Infinite Deity. The doubt may be partly met 
by an appeal to what reason and conscience teach, as they 
point inferentially to the wisdom and power of the Creator, 
and the sovereignty of the Euler and Judge. Eut it is when 
he speaks himself, directly and by word of mouth, verbally 
and articulately, that he can best be recognised as a real 
living person, with whom personal ties may be formed, and 
personal intercourse may be held intelligently. Hence, accord- 
ingly, from the beginning, God has spoken. His word 
came forth ; the Eternal Word which was with God, and was 
God. " No man hath seen God at any time, the only-be- 
gotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath de- 



ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 127 

clared him." He lias been declaring him from the first ; for 
his goings forth have been from of old. He has been going 
forth as the Word, declaring the Father ; not in dim guesses 
of reason merely, but in clear, distinct, articulate utterances 
of revelation. He has been thus, from the beginning, con- 
versing with men. So he conversed with Adam and the 
first fathers of our race. So he conversed with Noah, and 
his seed after him. So he conversed with Abraham, Isaac, 
Jacob, and all the patriarchs. So he conversed with Moses. 
Let me trace some of these successive manifestations or 
revelations of him whose goings forth have been from of old ; 
that I may show how personal they all are ; and how they 
are all verbal ; how it is a person who reveals himself, and 
that in speech. 

It does not appear that this invisible One ever made 
himself actually visible to our first parents, either before or 
after the fall. But they heard his voice. They heard it as 
an external voice ; not a voice in them merely, but a voice to 
them. Imagine the effect of their so hearing that voice for 
the first time. They have opened their eyes in Eden, with a 
glorious scene or panorama all round. Endlessly varied forms 
of beauty, and of living beauty, are on every side. New 
colours, new outlines, colours of richest hue, outlines of 
rarest grace, meet them at every step. An exuberance 
of animal life and joy bursts on them at every moment. 
And over and around them is the infinite vault of the sunlit 
or starlit heaven. Their souls are ravished with a tumultu- 
ous sense of vague delight. But it is unreflecting. Or if re- 
flection comes, it causes a grievous want to be felt. There is 
dead and blank silence, save for nature's dreamy sounds of 
sighing winds, and the voices of birds and beasts ; and the all 
but mute converse of their own living and congenial hearts. 
There is a longing for some living person, to tell them what 
all this may mean. 



128 ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 

Hark ! A new sound breaks on the ear. Speech, of the 
articulate sort with which they are themselves endowed, is 
heard. It does not come from either of their mouths ; nor 
from the mouth of any creature. From without, from above, 
from beside them, it is unmistakably and unequivocally heard. 
It is a person speaking to them • speaking to them personally. 
They recognise him as a person, speaking to them ; just as 
distinctly and certainly as they recognise one another as per- 
sons, when they speak to one another. And he says : I am 
the Lord thy God ; thou shalt love me, and keep my com- 
mandments. And this is my commandment : " Thou shalt 
not eat of this tree ; in the day thou eatest thou shalt die." 
Is it not to them now as if they personally saw him 1 Is it 
not a virtual seeing of him 1 And ever after, as long as they 
kept their innocency, could they fail to recognise and identify 
this Person when they heard his voice, some articulate voice 
of his, as he walked in the garden in the cool of the day 1 
They did assuredly so recognise and identify him on the day 
of their fall. They died, as seeing him who is invisible, when 
♦the word " cursed " came from divine lips ! Ah ! might they 
not have endured, as seeing him who is invisible, and so con- 
tinued to live 1 

After the fall, this invisible person continued to speak 
thus personally to our first parents, and to their descend- 
ants. Occasionally, though rarely, he made himself visible ; 
in human guise ; as if in exceptional anticipation of his actual 
coming in the flesh. For the most part, however, he simply 
spoke. How he spoke I do not presume to define ■ audibly, 
or in a whisper ; openly, or in a vision. But that he did 
speak I believe and am assured. Now I try to put myself in 
the place of any one of those Old Testament worthies to whom 
he thus personally spoke ; the child Samuel, for instance. I 
cannot but think that one thus favoured, even once, must have 
felt ever after as if he had seen the person speaking to him, 



ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 129 

and actually talked with, hini face to face 1 He might not 
venture to make a picture of him, even on the canvas of his 
own imagination : but I think he would have the impression 
of having seen him nevertheless. His having heard him 
speaking, asking and answering questions, carrying on a con- 
versation, as distinctly and indubitably as he ever heard 
his own brother, or any friend or common acquaintance do ; 
must have made him feel, especially in any moment of 
emergency, as if he had really seen before, and were now see- 
ing again, the divine speaker ; present now as then ; speaking 
now as then ? 

Of course, it is but few of those who walk with God 
who have been thus favoured. They were necessarily few, 
from the first. The general body of the Lord's people must 
be content to take what he says at second hand, from the 
reports of patriarchs and prophets ; or by hereditary tradi- 
tion ; by psalms and songs ; or ultimately by the surer 
method of transmission in written documents and printed 
books. If that is my position, how am I to be as one seeing 
him who is invisible? Nay, there is really no practical differ- 
ence here. It is the same exercise of faith in both cases. In 
both cases alike and equally there is an " as if" or " as it 
were;" not literal seeing ; but " as" seeing. But the " as if" 
or "as it were," is not pure fiction or fancy in either case. A 
real fact underlies and upholds it. The actual, present per- 
sonality apprehended and identified through speech, is not 
ideal, but real. It is so in both cases alike. Samuel 
hears the Lord speaking to him. He tells Eli what the Lord 
said. It is the same thing to Eli as if he had heard the Lord 
speaking to himself ; the same, not merely as regards the sub- 
stance or matter of the Lord's word ; but as to the impres- 
sion or apprehension of its being the Lord's word to him ; to 
him personally and presently ; here and now. To you, 
Samuel, hearing the Lord speaking to you ; to me, Eli, when 

K 



130 ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 

you tell me what the Lord said to you ; to me as truly as to 
you, the unseen speaker becomes a real and living person. I 
feel that I personally know him, as I know you whom I talk 
with about him every day. I seem to know him by sight, 
as I know you by sight ; when you and I meet and converse 
together. And both of us equally and alike know him by 
converse, growing into a sort of sight. It is altogether matter 
of faith to both of us. It is faith coming by hearing, and 
growing, I repeat, into a sort of sight. 

But the faith which thus comes, and thus grows, is 
spiritual and supernatural, as is its object. It is of the Holy 
Ghost. This is an indispensable condition, if I am to have 
the unseen revealer, the unseen speaker, in living personality 
before me, beside me, with me ; as friend with friend ; if it 
is to be as if I were indeed seeing him who is invisible. I 
might literally hear him, audibly and articulately speaking 
to me, without his even thus speaking to me having power 
to give me any such vivid sight of him. The voice in my 
dreaming ear might melt away. It might be unwelcome, and 
never reach my heart. It might be a pleasant song, whose 
echoes soon pass. There must be wrought in me, between 
him and me, some sympathy ; some good understanding and 
fellow-feeling about the matter spoken of. There must be 
established between him and me some personal relation of 
mutual confidence and amity. There must, in a word, be 
formed a certain close unity of faith working by love. Then 
will that quasi vision, " as seeing" be realised ; that vivid 
sense and keen grasp of " my Lord and my God," as person- 
ally present to my eager gaze, my touch, my embrace, which 
compensates, and far more than compensates, for my never 
having set on him my bodily eye. It is the Spirit, giving me 
the faith which he, who is my Lord and my God, preferred 
to the conviction of actual sense, and sight, and touch ; when 
he said to Thomas, " Because thou hast seen me thou hast 



ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 131 

believed : blessed are they that bave not seen, and yet have 
believed" (John xx. 29) ; believed as seeing him who is in- 
visible. 

The incarnation, issuing in the resurrection and ascen- 
sion, facilitates this exercise of faith. It must have done so 
in the case of those who saw the Lord in the body. They 
might well feel, and live, ever after, as if still seeing him who 
had become invisible. But Paul had no such advantage, any 
more than Moses had. He saw the risen Lord ; but only 
according to the ancient fashion, in the blaze of the Shechinah 
glory, and in visions by night. Even that amount of actual 
seeing you have not. There are, however, considerations 
which may counterbalance this drawback and disadvantage ; 
such as these three. 

1. Was ever man portrayed so graphically as Jesus is in 
those wonderful biographies of the four Gospels ; the joint 
productions of the Holy Ghost and the Evangelists ; divinely 
inspired, and yet so intensely and livingly human 1 ? His 
frame and features, what he was like as to his outer man, 
his gait and carriage, you have no means of guessing. But 
otherwise, you have him all before you. Lo ! he stands, with 
outstretched arms, clasping babes to his bosom. Hark ! he 
speaks a word in season to that weary one, " Thy sins be for- 
given thee ! " See ! a funeral procession stopped, and a widow's 
heart made to leap for joy ! Come ! look into that dark 
chamber ; go to that fresh grave ! Jesus weeps ! Yes ; you 
follow him as he walks by Galilee's lake and in the cities of 
Judah. Then, coming on to the close ; the silence before 
his judges, the eye looking upon Peter, the tender word from 
the cross to John and Mary, the prayer for his murderers, the 
strangely calm converse with the repenting thief, the cry of 
desertion, the closing sigh of repose ; you see and hear it all ! 
It is all to you as it was to the very eye-witnesses and ear- wit- 
nesses themselves ; as if you, as well as they, had seen it all. 



132 ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 

2. You have the full "benefit of sharing with them in that 
Letter seeing of their Master which they obtained when his 
own promise was fulfilled, and on his departure the other 
Comforter came. They themselves impart to you all that 
they were then taught as to the high and deep meanings, 
and the manifold hearings on the character and government of 
God, of that .human history, that human experience, which, 
while they were eye-witnesses and ear- witnesses of it, was in 
many particulars so incomprehensible. It is as illuminated 
by all the light of the insight which they got after Pentecost 
into Christ's fulfilment of all righteousness : into his honouring 
the law by his voluntary and vicarious obedience, and his 
satisfying the law by his atoning sufferings and death ; that 
you now read, as they wrote them, the sayings and doings of 
the great Redeemer. He is set forth speaking words of 
wisdom and grace, doing deeds of mercy and love, before your 
eyes ; he is set forth crucified before your eyes ; not merely 
as he appeared to them when he was with them ; but over 
and above that, as he appeared to them after he was gone ; 
with the new spiritual apprehension to which they then 
attained of the whole plan and purpose of his ministry, the 
entire scope and efficacy of his mission, and especially of its 
awful close. It is as having died and risen again, not now 
dead, but alive for evermore, that he speaks to you. And 
you hearing, not his apostles, but through and with them 
himself, seem to see him who is invisible. 

3. For it is not to be overlooked that the same Spirit who 
taught and moved them to realise the Lord's presence as if 
they still both heard and saw him, is dwelling and working 
in you. To you, as to them, he testifies of Christ ; taking of 
what is his and showing it to you. He brings to your re- 
membrance the things which Christ has said, and opens them 
up to you, and applies them to your case, whatever it may be ; 
so pointedly, so vividly, that you gaze into his face as you say 



ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 133 

" Speak, Lord ! for thy servant heareth." Thus he really does 
what some profane dreamers or deceivers profess to do. They 
pretend, by their mystic or magic legerdemain of clairvoyance, 
to establish a relation between you and some departed saint 
or sinner, in virtue of which it shall be to you as if you saw 
the man now and talked with him face to face. It is an 
impious mockery of the office and work of the Holy Ghost. 
They say, but it is a lie, that the spirit whom they evoke 
will tell you news of the unseen world ; of heaven and of 
hell, if there be a hell. That is more than the Holy Ghost 
himself undertakes to do ; more than, according to any promise, 
I can expect him to do, when he reveals Christ to me and in 
me. He bids me read and ponder the record of Christ which 
he has inspired. He has nothing more, nothing else, to say. 
But he brings that record and my experience very closely 
together, and welds them in one ; so that, by means of that 
record, and using its contents as materials, I have real present 
converse with Christ now ; almost, in a sense, by word of 
mouth, as those who lived with him had in that olden time. Is 
not that something like seeing him as he is 1 Is not the Holy 
Spirit true and faithful in thus revealing Christ ? He loves 
him too well, and he loves you too well, to interpose between 
Christ and you. He does not speak of himself. He does not 
glorify himself. He does not hinder Christ from himself 
manifesting himself to you. It is his very office and business ; 
it is his joy, to remove every obstacle of carnality and unbelief, 
and hardness of heart, and blindness of mind, on your part ; 
just in order that Christ may manifest himself to you, as he 
does not unto the world ; that you may see him, though the 
world sees him not, that you may be as seeing him who is 
invisible. He brings Christ and you together, face to face, 
that you may speak to Christ, and Christ may speak to you, 
to your heart. Lo ! Jesus ; very near to you, at your ear, at 
your elbow; able to speak, now actually speaking, to your 



134 ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 

heart ! Whatever your mood of mind may be, whatever your 
trial, whatever your need : look out ! look up ! as seeing him 
who is invisible. Catch his eye ! Feel his touch ! Look ! 
He smiles ; or perhaps frowns, and smiles again. Listen ! 
Did ever man speak as this man is speaking to you now? It 
is no dream. It is a blessed reality. You gaze on his face, 
you lean on his bosom, you whisper in his ear, as John the 
beloved did at the supper. You rest and rejoice, as seeing 
him who is invisible. 

II. This joy of the Lord is your strength. Not only at the 
communion table do you rest, but in the field of toil or of 
battle you endure, as seeing him who is invisible. So Christ 
himself, the man Christ Jesus, endured. The secret of his 
endurance was, that with the eye of faith he always saw the 
Father. In the utmost depths, under the darkest clouds, he 
was always as one seeing the unseen Father ; seeing him 
personally present with him ; personally well affected towards 
him, and well pleased in him ; even when for our sins he was 
chastening him sore. "I have set the Lord always before 
me ; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved " 
(Psalm xvi. 8). Thus Jesus himself endured, as seeing the 
Father who is invisible. And now he says to you, " He 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father," and is therefore in 
the very same position in which I was when I endured as 
seeing the unseen Father. For when the Holy Spirit opens 
the eye of your faith ; it is not I alone who will manifest 
myself to you, but the Father also. What a source of 
strength ! There is a triple rope to hold you fast and firm ! 
The Holy Ghost shows you Christ ; Christ shows you the 
Father ! The Holy Ghost strengthens you to endure as 
seeing the unseen Saviour, even as he strengthened him to 
endure as seeing the unseen Father ! It is in the felt and 
realised presence of a divine person, unseen in one sense, but 



ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 135 

in another virtually and vividly seen, that your strength to 
endure lies. And he is to be seen by you, not merely as an 
object of contemplation in a leisure hour; but as, in the time 
of danger, standing beside you ; at your right hand ; holding 
you up ; speaking to you ; conversing with you • calling you 
by name, and bidding you be strong and of a good courage. 

Moses, in Pharaoh's presence, felt and was sure that he 
was not alone. There was one at his side whom Pharaoh did 
not see, and he did not see. So far as appears, he had never 
seen him, except in symbol, as at the burning bush. He had 
never seen him, as Abraham and others had seen him, sitting 
at meat and exchanging customary civilities. But Moses 
knew this unseen Saviour of Israel by previous personal 
acquaintance and intercourse, as a man knows his friend. 
The Lord had spoken to him, mouth to mouth. It was as 
good as seeing him when he talked with him at the bush. 
And so Moses knows and recognises the Lord now ; as if he 
saw him now at his right hand. Therefore he is not moved. 

The three confessors whom the tyrant cast bound into the 
burning fiery furnace, heated seven times, endured as seeing 
him who is invisible. Nebuchadnezzar indeed saw four men, 
instead of three, loose, in the midst of the fire ; the form of 
the fourth being like the Son of God. His eyes were opened ; 
as the eyes of the servant of Elisha were opened, in answer to 
his master's prayer, to see the mountain full of horses and 
chariots of fire round about Elisha. The prophet himself did 
not see this great sight ; the angel of the Lord thus encamping, 
with so mighty a host, around him. It was not he, but his 
servant, who needed that satisfactory assurance by actual, 
literal sight. The prophet walked by faith, and endured as 
seeing him who is invisible. So also did the three Jewish 
youths. It was not they, but their persecutor, who required 
to have actual, ocular demonstration of the Son of God being 
present with them. They had known him personally before, 



136 ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 

and they knew and recognised him now. They endured as 
seeing him who is invisible. 

The Lord would have you to endure, as seeing him thus 
by faith, faith coming to be all but sight ; in every aspect of 
his relation to you. 

As your surety, to answer for you, he would have you 
to see him, though invisible, at your right hand. Thus only 
you can endure, when you have to stand either before God, 
or before man. 

You have to stand before God. You are confused, 
ashamed, undone. A sense of sin unnerves you. Old sins, 
never enough repented of ; new and fresh sins, with all the 
aggravations of divine teaching and experienced mercy, must 
rush in upon you. You tremble, and are at the point to sink 
and die. But endure as seeing him who is invisible. See 
him near you, close beside you ; sprinkling you with his own 
blood ; clothing you with his own righteousness ; strength- 
ening you by his own Spirit ; and assuring you that he is 
here to answer for you in the judgment to the very utter- 
most. 

Standing again before your fellow-men, to testify and 
plead ; to defend yourself, to commend Christ, to persuade 
them ; you are disconcerted and embarrassed. How weak 
are you, and how vacillating ! How slow of speech and full 
of misgivings ! And then, how entirely are you at their mercy ! 
If they knew all, if they knew you as well as you know 
yourself, how might they turn upon you with the taunt, 
" Physician, heal thyself I" You feel as if you could not con- 
front or face them. But still endure, as seeing beside you 
him who is invisible. He knows you better than they can 
know you ; better than you can know yourself. He knows 
all. And knowing all, he will not be ashamed of you before 
the angels, if you are not ashamed of him before men. He 
is at your right hand. They who might reproach you do not 



ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 137 

see him. Pharaoh, who would persecute you, does not see 
him : but angels see him : and you endure as seeing him who 
is invisible. 

As your Lord and Master, your guide and example, he 
would have you to endure as seeing him who is invisible. 
To endure, what 1 Whatever he may appoint ; whatever 
trial of your faith, or patience, or love ; whatever sacrifice of 
self for God or for man. To endure, how 1 As seeing him 
who is invisible ; seeing him, though unseen, beside you ; for 
he tells you how he, in your circumstances, would have en- 
dured j and how he can and will make you endure, as he 
would have endured, in the like case, himself. Is it really 
so % you may ask with a sudden start. Yes, brother ! That 
is what you have to realise by faith. Ah ! then, you may 
well reply ; I must needs be up and doing ; doing, in speech 
and action, as he would himself do, were he in my place here 
and now. He is in my place ; beside me in my place, what- 
ever that place is. Well, therefore, may I endure in it as 
seeing the unseen. 

As your sympathising friend and elder brother, he would 
have you to endure as seeing him who is invisible. He is 
the same to you as he was to those who saw him in the 
flesh. He speaks to you as he spoke to Martha. He 
weeps with you as he wept with Mary. In whatever 
scene or company you may, he is with you in it. Other- 
wise, it is no scene or company for you. But if he is 
with you j if you can realise his being with you ; in what- 
ever scene or whatever company ; you may be firm and fear- 
less on his behalf ; enduring as seeing him who is invisible. 
It may be that you have a very hard experience to meet ; 
perhaps one of the hardest of human experiences. You 
may have to endure, whether in joy or sorrow, a certain sense 
of loneliness ; the feeling of a great blank; as if you had 
none to sympathise with you. But still endure, as seeing 



138 ENDURING AS SEEING THE INVISIBLE ONE. 

him who is invisible. See him, though unseen, opening your 
chamber door, coming near your couch, taking you kindly by 
the hand, mingling his tears with yours ; and yet bidding 
you endure as he endured : when, in the days of his flesh, he 
made supplication with strong crying and tears unto him that 
was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he 
feared. You are not alone. He is at your right hand • he, 
" whom, having not seen, you love ; in whom, though now 
you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeak- 
able, and full of glory." 



THE SIN OF CAKEFULNESS. 139 



VIII. 
THE SIN OF CAEEFULNESS. 

"And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no 
thought for your life, what ye shall eat ; neither for the body, what 
ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more 
than raiment. Consider the ravens : for they neither sow nor reap ; 
which neither have storehouse nor barn ; and God feedeth them : 
how much more are ye better than the fowls ? And which of you 
with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit ? If ye then 
be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought 
for the rest ? Consider the lilies how they grow : they toil not, 
they spin not ; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his 
glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothe the 
grass, which is to-day in the field, and to-morrow is cast into the 
oven ; how much more will he clothe you, ye of little faith ? 
And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither 
be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things do the nations of the 
world seek after : and your Father knoweth that ye have need of 
these things. But rather seek ye the kingdom of God ; and all 
these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock ; for 
it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell 
that ye have, and give alms ; provide yourselves bags which wax 
not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief 
approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, 
there will your heart be also. Let your loins be girded about, and 
your lights burning ; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait 
for their lord, when he will return from the wedding ; that, when 
he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. 
Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall 
find watching : verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, 
and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve 



140 THE SIN OF CAREFULNESS. 

them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the 
third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants. And 
this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour 
the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suf- 
fered his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also : 
for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not." — 
Luke xii. 22-40. 

There are two forms or fashions, two kinds or modes of 
worldliness, covetousness and carefulness, against both of 
which the Lord warns his hearers in this discourse (vers. 
13-40). The warning against covetousness is suggested by 
the incident which gave occasion to the conversation (ver. 13). 
One of the company, the crowd or promiscuous multitude, 
solicits his interposition as umpire in a question of property 
between him and his ^brother. The Lord declines the office, 
in somewhat summary if not even sharp terms (ver. 14). Then 
he gives the company or crowd a lesson on the sin and danger 
of coveting wealth, or counting npon it ; illustrating the 
lesson by a parable (vers. 15-21). 

But heaping or laying up treasure for oneself, instead of 
seeking to be rich toward God, is not the only way in which 
the 'love of this present world works and manifests itself. 
Among the wealthy, that may be its common shape ; but 
with the poor, who are the majority, it must be otherwise. 
Still it is the same sore evil in either case. For it is the very 
same spirit which in one state of life prompts the proud boast 
(ver. 19) that in another moves the anxious question (ver. 22), 
" What shall I eat % What shall I put on 1 " It is the same 
concern ; to have some worldly portion in hand, apart from 
simple trust in God. 

In a society into which not many rich are called, it is the 
latter phase of this fault that may be expected for the most 
part to prevail. And accordingly, when he proceeds to deal 
with that, the Lord turns from the general crowd of listeners 



THE SIN OF CAREFULNESS. 141 

to his own immediate followers (ver. 22). It is his disciples 
he addresses ; and he addresses them as his disciples. His 
whole reasoning with them is founded, not merely on the fact 
of their being professedly his disciples, but on the assumption 
of their being so in reality as well as by profession. So re- 
garding them as his believing people, he urges four arguments 
against their being guilty of the sin of anxious carefulness or 
thoughtfulness about their earthly condition ; about worldly 
things (vers. 23-32). And he gives two tests by which they 
may try themselves as to their freedom from this sin ; or 
rather perhaps two practical directions as to the best and 
most effectual way of securing their freedom from it (vers. 
33-36). 

I. The Lord's first argument is founded on an appeal to 
creation (ver. 23). He asks you, his disciples, to consider 
God simply as your Maker. He is the author of your being ; 
the source and fountain of your life ; the former of your 
bodies. Ask yourselves, he says, if he who gave you the life 
may not be trusted for the food needful to sustain the life he 
gave 1 if he who formed for you the body may not be trusted 
for the raiment needed for its clothing % 

It is an argument a fortiori, from the stronger; from the 
greater to the less. It may be put thus : — The life is more 
than meat ; if therefore God gives the life, much more will 
he give meat for its support : the body is more than raiment ; 
if therefore God fashions the body, much more will he pro- 
vide raiment for its wear. And the argument rises in force 
in proportion as the greater boon already bestowed transcends 
any lesser boon required for its preservation or development. 
In a sense, the argument may be applied to the brutes that 
perish. Even in their case, the life they receive at first from 
God is more than the meat they must have afterwards if 
the life is to be kept. The body which God makes for them, 



142 THE SIN OF CAREFULNESS. 

so wondrously organised outwardly, and so still more won- 
drously animated from within, is more than the wool or hair, 
or whatever else in the outer skin protects and warms it. God 
will not make void his gift of life, even of mere animal life, 
by withholding that without which it perishes. He will not 
form a fragile structure of nice adjustment and exquisite sensi- 
bility, and neglect to shield it from exposure and from harm. 

Of course, the argument may be applied with immensely 
greater power to man; and to man considered simply as 
man. 

So far life in him that needs meat is like that of the brutes ; 
it is animal. But it is associated in him with intelligence 
akin to that of God. His body also is like that of any beast ; 
it is material. But it is the minister of the immaterial spirit 
lodged in it, and it is capable of becoming itself spiritual. 
]\!an, therefore, so fearfully and wonderfully made, may surely 
cherish the expectation that the giver of such life as his will 
be at some pains to feed it ; that the maker of such a body as 
his will give himself some concern about its being clothed. 

But the full force of the Lord's argument is reserved for 
his own disciples. It is to you, his poor ones, his little ones, 
that the Lord especially and most emphatically addresses it. 
Your animal life, about whose support you are so apt to be 
anxious, is not merely associated with mind, as in the case of 
created intelligences generally, but is allied now, by redemp- 
tion, to Divinity itself. The material body about whose cover- 
ing you take so much thought is destined to be conformed to 
the Lord's own glorious body at his coming. Surely to you 
the Lord's brief and pithy question should come home with 
resistless power : " Is not the life more than meat, and the body 
than raiment 1 " You have received at God's hands the higher 
heavenly life as well as the lower earthly life ; and received it 
at such a cost, through the sacrifice of his Son ; and by such 
a process, the renewing of the Holy Ghost. Can you not then 



THE SIN OF CAKEFULNESS. 143 

trust this God for the bread and water you must have to eat 
and drink during the few years of your sojourn here 1 You, 
whose bodies, now bearing the image of the earthly, are soon 
to bear the image of the heavenly, can you not reckon on fit 
raiment being provided for the brief fragment of time that 
must elapse before they shall need no covering but that of 
the silent tomb, until they are summoned to put on incorrup- 
tion and immortality ? 

II. The next appeal of the Lord is to providence ; the 
providence of God over the creatures he has made. And it 
is twofold (vers. 24-28.) 

,. See what God does for the creatures that can take no 
thought for themselves (vers. 24, 27, 28). And consider 
what your taking thought for yourselves can do for you (vers. 
25, 26). Most fitly is this last consideration imbedded in 
the midst, in the very heart, of the other. Between what 
God does, in his providence, for feeding the fowls of the air, 
and what he does, in his providence, for the clothing of the 
grass of the field, the somewhat stern, if not even sarcastic, 
exposure of your helplessness comes in. And it comes in so 
as to point out the precise evil or sin that the Lord means to 
reprove. It is the evil or sin of taking thought. Of that the 
fowls of the air are incapable ; as is also the grass of the field. 

Both, however, are capable, as all God's creatures are, of con- 
formity to the conditions of their being and their well-being ; 
and in some sense therefore they are all under an obligation to 
such conformity. The ravens must, if they would prosper, 
fly abroad for their food ; seek it and bring it home. The 
lilies even, stationary as they are, if they would grow, must 
imbibe and rightly improve the kindly juice and moisture of 
the soil in which they have their root. Both alike must be 
capable of using the appropriate means of life and growth. 
The only thing of which they are here said to be incapable is 



144 THE SIX OF CAREFULNESS. 

taking thought. Of course, in your case, your use of means as 
to food and clothing ; your compliance with the laws or condi- 
tions of your being and your well-being, must be different from 
what it can be in theirs. It must be intelligent, and there- 
fore conscientious ; involving free choice and responsibility. 

But as regards the absence of taking thought, the 
parallel is conclusive and complete. The argument is irre- 
sistible. "What can all your taking thought do for you ? It 
may furrow your brow with premature wrinkles. It may 
whiten your head, while yet young, with the wintry snows of 
age. It may waste and wither the bloom of opening youth 
and vigorous strength of manhood. Worse than that, it may 
blight and kill warm love, and turn the heart that once was 
tender into flinty rock. But can it lengthen life by a moment ; 
or increase stature by a cubit 1 Can it work for your good, 
as regards food and clothing 1 Diligence in your calling ; a 
wise prudence in the expenditure of the fruit of your dili- 
gence, may do much in that way. But will taking thought 
do anything 1 Will mere anxiety about your affairs help you 
at all ; or the wretched policy which such anxiety is too 
apt to prompt ? What real good comes of all its shifts and 
subtle expedients'? Would you not consult better for your- 
selves, even in the worst extremity, by bidding away from 
you the schemes implied in taking thought, and simply act- 
ing according to what is present duty, present law % 

Do the ravens and the lilies fare at all the worse for doing 
so? They take no thought. They do not calculate consequences 
and balance nice questions of lawfulness or expediency. They 
simply conform, at every instant, to the present will of God. 
They do so unconsciously. May not you, as the Lord's dis- 
ciples, do so, intelligently and belie vingly ; casting all your 
care on him who careth for you ? "Be careful for nothing, but 
in every thing, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, 
make your requests known unto God." Your taking thought 



THE SIN OF CAREFULNESS. 145 

can avail for nothing : bnt that will avail for you much. For 
it is immediately added : " and/' in your doing that, " the 
peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your 
hearts and minds through Christ Jesus -" — peace more satis- 
fying than the raven's unsought portion ; grace more beau- 
tiful than the lily's unconscious smile. 

III. The Lord would have his disciples to abstain from 
taking thought ; first, because in their case pre-eminently the 
giver of the life and former of the body may surely be relied 
on for food and raiment ; and secondly, because the G-od, who 
in his providence feeds the ravens and clothes the lilies, must 
be more solicitous about the welfare of his intelligent and 
redeemed offspring. Now, thirdly, that gracious relation 
comes in more expressly (vers. 29, 30). The emphasis here 
is on the word "ye." It is an emphatic contrast. The 
argument or appeal here rises to a higher stage. From 
creation and providence, it passes on to grace. The relation 
which grace establishes between God's children and himself 
comes in. It is that of fatherhood and sonship. 

It is admitted, as it would seem, that they who are not 
God's children may be expected to take thought ; to seek 
after all these things. It is only natural that they should ; it 
is just what might be anticipated in their circumstances. 

But you are differently situated. You have a Father in 
heaven ; God is your Father. And it should be enough for you, 
in your worst straits, to remember, yes, to call to mind in all 
emergencies and extremities, that your heavenly Father sees 
your case ; that he knoweth that you have need of these things. 

Were I lying down at night in a bare and empty cabin, 
with wife and children all but famished around me, and with 
no scrap anywhere of provision for to-morrow, it would be 
something, much, everything, to know that a kind and liberal 
friend, not far off, had been made aware of my case. I might 



146 THE SIN OF CAREFULNESS. 

have no express promise from him as regards my present 
straits ; no assurance of his seasonable interposition for my 
relief ; nor any notion of the Tray in which he might come 
to help me. Still the thought of his knowing my need would 
soothe and solace me : and in the home of my desolate desti- 
tution I might lay myself down and sleep in peace. Your 
Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. Your 
Father, he who, that he might call you his children, spared 
not his only-begotten Son, but gave him up to the death that 
he might redeem you from the position of criminals, himself 
becoming the criminal in your stead, and might make you, in 
and with himself, sons as he is Son ; your Father, he who, 
that you may call him your Father, sendeth forth the Spirit 
of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father : he knoweth 
that you have need of these things. He knoweth all your 
need. And he knows it as your Father. Should not that 
be enough for you ? How unreasonable, how unworthy, how 
inexcusable, for you to be careful and troubled about these 
things : you who have such a Father ; so able, so willing, to 
charge himself with the burden of them all ! 

There may be some excuse or apology for the nations of 
the world taking thought about these things. They who 
have no Father in heaven, no one whom they can warrant- 
ably, or consciously, or believingly, address by that endearing 
name ; to whom in Christ Jesus they can look up as his 
Father and their Father, his God and their God ; who have 
no living, loving apprehension of a fatherly relation and 
heart in h im toward them, or a filial relation and heart in 
them toward him, — they may take thought. There may be 
some explanation of their anxiety. Xay, in an emphatic and 
awful sense, they do well to be anxious. ^Yould that they 
were a hundred times more anxious than they are. For they 
too, as well as his own dear children, are absolutely depend- 
ent on him ; helplessly dependent ; at his disposal ; in his 



THE SIN OF CAEEFULNESS. 147 

hands. They cannot feed or clothe themselves. The earthly 
good things which they have, which are all the good they 
have, are not in their keeping. All their solicitude about 
them, all their care and careful, busy, keen, contriving 
schemes, cannot secure for them an hour's possession of them. 
A breath of wind scatters their deep-laden argosies. A sudden 
crash brings their best speculations to the dust. A swift 
stroke of disease or trouble lays them prostrate. Care as they 
may, plan and plot as they may, they cannot, any more than 
the poorest saint of God, add a cubit to their stature, an hour 
to their lives, a moment to their proprietorship of the things 
that they call their own. They are not their own. They 
hold them at God's pleasure. And by what tenure ? on what 
footing ? on what terms 1 On forbearance merely ; in long- 
suffering patience. No covenant right, no children's title, 
have they to any one of them, or any substitute or equivalent 
if all should be swept away, save only the stings of conscience 
and the arrows of an angry God ! 

ye orphans in the great Father's world, ye who, under 
the full blaze of God's manifested fatherly love, choose to be 
fatherless still, be anxious ! Be careful ! Full well you may. 
This night your souls may be required of you. The things 
you covet and grasp and enjoy, your sumptuous fare and 
purple clothing, your worldly pomp and carnal ease, the things 
you seek after : nay, the veriest rag of your raiment ; 
the tiniest morsel of your food; the briefest moment of 
night's quiet sleep and day's warm light; all are yours by 
sufferance merely. You cannot hold them. They pass, they 
are gone. And where and what are you ? 

All these things do the nations of this world seek after. 
But you, ye disciples of Christ, are not thus fatherless. I will a 
not leave you orphans. I will come unto you. Yes, in yo T j# r 
deepest poverty, of whatever sort ; in your utter beggary and 
want, I will come unto you. I who have brought you out of hell 



148 THE SIN OF CAKEFULNESS. 

and bought you for heaven, will come unto you, to tell you 
that your Father, my Father and your Father, my God and 
your God, knoweth what you have need of ; knoweth it to the 
minutest care that can oppress you ; knoweth it in the view 
of its being his good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 

IV. This is the Lord's crowning argument or appeal (vers. 
31, 32.) And it may tell in a twofold way. Viewed as 
turning on the contrast between Christ's disciples, who have 
God as their Father, and the nations of the world, it may be 
put in two lights. It is more natural and, in a sense, excus- 
able for them than for you to seek after and take thought 
about these things ; for first, on the one hand, they have no 
Father in heaven, — none whom they recognise and own as 
such, — on whom to devolve the care of these things ; and 
secondly, on the other hand, they have really nothing else to 
care for. But you, casting all your care about seeking after 
these things on your Father, who knoweth that you have need 
of them, and what need you have of them, are called to seek 
the kingdom of God in the simple, implicit belief that all 
these things shall be added unto you. When they come to 
harass you, these worldly anxieties ; when they crowd in upon 
your soul, as if they would overpower and overwhelm it ; you 
meet them as God's children, not only in that character 
satisfied to leave them all to your Father, who knows your 
need, but in that character also seeking his kingdom. Like 
Nehemiah, you say, "I am doing a great work, so that I 
cannot come down." 

" It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the king- 
dom." So the Son of his love speaks to you, his brethren. 
That is the consummation of his loving-kindness towards you. 
He contemplated nothing short of that, when he sent me to 
make him known to you as Father; my Father and your 
Father; and when he commissioned me to bring you into such 



THE SIN OF CAREFULNESS. 149 

oneness with myself as implies his loving you as he loveth me, 
and looking on you as joint-heirs with me. It is his good 
pleasure to give you the kingdom (ver. 32). And if so, what 
else will he not give you 1 What else that is needed in order 
to your obtaining that 1 He may keep you, as his sons, and 
in that character heirs of the kingdom which it is his good 
pleasure to give you, under a cloud for a time. The world 
may not know you ; and you may often be at a loss to know 
yourselves as sons of God and heirs of his gifted kingdom. 
But you believe ; the Lord helping your unbelief. And that is 
what your faith, be it more or less, grasps ; that, and nothing 
short of that ; its being your Father's good pleasure to give you 
the kingdom. I care not with what degree or measure of 
personal confidence your faith grasps that. It is that that it 
grasps, if it grasps Christ at all. And if it grasps that, how 
should it not grasp all that comes before that 1 ? Will your 
Father, whose good pleasure it is to give to you, as his sons, 
the kingdom, withhold the morsel of meat and rag of raiment 
you need for a little while till the time for your entering on 
your high inheritance comes 1 

Nay, it is an argument and appeal going far beyond the 
mere necessaries of food and raiment. It comes home to 
you as spiritual men. It assumes that while others seek 
after these things, the things that concern their food and 
raiment, their personal satisfaction, and worldly honour and 
estate ; you have something else to care for. You have a 
higher aim, and you live for a higher object. You seek after 
something better than the nations of the world seek after. 
And you do so in faith ; knowing God as your Father • and 
being sure that, as your Father, he means to give you no 
paltry boon, no mere measure of partial indulgence and grace ; 
but the kingdom ; the whole kingdom ; all that belongs to his 
Son as his King in Sion. 

Surely, with such a prospect and in such a position, you 



150 THE SIN OF CAREFULNESS. 

have something else to do than to mind earthly things ; 
something better to care for than meat and drink and clothing ; 
something higher to live for than ease or contentment, or 
wealth or honour. What leisure have you for such anxieties 
as these % "What room in your hearts for them 1 Lay not up 
for yourselves treasures on earth. For surely here again the 
greater includes and implies the less. If the initial or a priori 
presumption, or arguments drawn from creation and provi- 
dence, warrant confidence in him as not likely to grudge you 
the means of sustaining the natural life originally bestowed on 
you : much more is the inference from your filial rank and 
inheritance, reaching on into eternal ages, conclusive as to 
your title to rely on God for all that you can need for the 
eternal life which is his gift in Christ his Son. 

Now, let these four arguments against the sin of care, or 
undue anxiety about worldly concerns, be brought to bear 
collectively and cumulatively, pointedly and personally, on 
the conscience and heart of a doubting and distrustful child of 
God. Let him be recognised as really and truly a child of God, 
notwithstanding his distrust and doubt. The appeal to him 
in that character will cover all who would ask to be associated 
with him in the recognition of it. 

Stand forth, therefore, thou child of God. Thou who 
believest in the only-begotten Son of God for the saving of 
thy soul and thine eternal blessedness in heaven ; but who 
still art troubled with uneasy thoughts and restless longings 
about thy worldly estate and prospects, as regards thyself or 
thy household. Thou art rebuked on all hands. 

Creation rebukes thee. Who breathed into thee that 
wondrous life of thine, which, shared with the lowest animal 
pulsation on the one hand, is yet capable of union with the 
highest divine perfection of being on the other 1 Who made 
for thee that body which is not to rot in earth, like the irre- 



THE SIN OF CAEEFULNESS. 151 

coverable remains of the beasts that perish, but is to be 
fashioned like the glorious body of the risen Saviour ? Canst 
thou not trust him who has breathed into thee such a life, 
reaching to eternity, for the few loaves and fishes that are 
needed to sustain it for a day 1 Canst thou not trust him who 
has made for thee such a body, destined to such a fashion, for 
the habiliments that are to cover it till it wants none other 
than a shroud, while it lies waiting in the grave for glory 1 

Providence rebukes thee. Apart from the right use of 
means, and the due observance of all the laws and condi- 
tions of thy place and position in your Father's world, what 
canst thou gain by anxious carefulness and thought 1 See 
what he does for the creatures that are incapable of such soli- 
citude. And ask thyself what that can do for thee 1 

Grace rebukes thee. Thou art not an outcast, forlorn and 
fatherless, in the wild waste wilderness of a fallen world. 
That was thy state once ; and if it were so still, it might ex- 
cuse, and even warrant, all the anxiety thou feelest, or canst 
feel, as to thy good estate now. Nay, if rightly realised, it 
should move thee to far deeper concern about thy good estate, 
not now, but for hereafter. But thou art now a child, a son ; 
at home with God as thy Father in thine Elder Brother, his 
Son Jesus Christ. Wilt thou not trust thy Father in heaven ; 
thy Father thus calling thee to be his son; for food and 
clothing 1 " He that spared not his own Son, but delivered 
him up for thee, how shall he not with him also freely give 
thee all things?" 

Glory rebukes thee. Thou hast something else to seek, 
beside and beyond the earthly cares that are so apt to 
trouble thee. The kingdom of God should be occupying 
thy thoughts. In itself, and on its own account, it is 
worthy of thy whole soul being absorbed in seeking it. To 
be an instrument or agent in advancing it, is for thee the 
highest earthly privilege ; to be partaker of its eternal 



152 ; THE SIN OF CAREFULNESS. 

blessedness is the heavenly reward and crown. Seeking 
that, it may well be expected that thou shouldst subordinate 
to its claims and anxieties all claims and anxieties of a meaner 
sort. All the rather, because he who calls thee to do so gives 
thee the kingdom. That is secure to thee by his sovereign 
gift. It is his good pleasure to give thee the kingdom. Can 
it be otherwise than his good pleasure to give thee all that 
thou canst need till thou reachest thy glorious home in 
heaven 1 Does not the greater gift include all the lesser ? 
He gives thee the kingdom now. It is his good pleasure, as 
thy Father, to give it to thee in measure and in foretaste now ; 
not as meat and drink, but as righteousness and peace, and 
joy in the Holy Ghost. What he gives thee already of the 
kingdom, in thy sense and experience of thine adoption as a 
son, receiving the Spirit of his Son in thy heart, crying, Abba, 
Father, is surely enough to warrant reliance on him for all 
that the neediest son can ask of the most loving father. And 
viewed as the earnest of the full possession of the kingdom, 
it may well give force to the appeal, as addressed to the feeblest 
and most faint-hearted — "Fear not, little flock ; for it is 
your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." 

The Lord adds to these arguments against carefulness, 
two tests or practical directions. 

The first test is liberality; or a willingness to part with 
your substance ; be it money, or time, or influence, or ability 
of whatever sort ; to part with it as a sacrifice, a sale ; 
" Sell that ye have ;" to part with it freely, and without hope 
of its being replaced, as alms; "Give alms'' (vers. 33, 34). 
These two conditions are here implied. Selling is sacrifice, or 
self-denial. Giving alms is bounty, mere gratuitous donation, 
irrespective of any prospect of return of any sort ; whether 
in kind, or in gratitude, or in fame. To be a fair criterion of 
your being careful for nothing, but casting all your care on 



THE SIN OF CAKEFULNESS. 153 

your Father in heaven ; your beneficence, or your readiness 
to give, must be a selling of what you have, which is self- 
sacrifice ; and it must be mere alms ; giving with no view to 
any requital. It must be such as to show that you really can 
and do trust your Father in heaven ; and that, relying on him, 
you are prepared, at the call of charity, to consider more your 
present duty than your ultimate security from want ; and to 
do so with a disinterested aim, not looking for any present 
recompense, but acting on the principle, "Freely ye have 
received, freely give.' ; " It is more blessed to give than to 
receive." 

And not merely as a test or criterion of a right state of 
mind as regards your earthly possessions and powers, of what- 
ever sort, is this manner of giving the one and using the 
other to be enforced ; but as pointing, in the way of a direc- 
tory, to the best method for developing and stimulating the 
grace in question. Let it be in active exercise. Let it have 
full scope and swing. Let there be real selling and giving 
alms ; not the pretence and name ; as when I cast in what I 
call my mite into the treasury of a good cause, when it costs 
me nothing, and does not throw me in the least more than I 
felt before on the providence of God ; or when I may indeed 
sacrifice some personal good, or what I regard as such, but 
either with a grudge, or with a reserved expectation of some 
acknowledgment. Let there be real selling and giving alms. 
That will at once prove and perfect the habit of " taking no 
thought/' but trusting him who is our Maker, Preserver, 
Father. 

But this first test, even as thus explained and applied, 
is imperfect, and apt to be fallacious, unless it is qualified or 
supplemented by the second. For it may be the result merely 
of a natural disposition, the gratification of a natural im- 
pulse ; the impulse of constitutional good nature or reckless 
prodigality. If it is to be really genuine, springing out of 



154 THE SIN OF CAREFULNESS. 

genuine trust in God, founded on your knowledge of Mm as 
your maker and preserver ; your Father, whose good pleasure 
it is to give you the kingdom ; if its motive is to be your 
being wholly occupied in seeking the kingdom of God, and 
having therefore neither taste nor time for earthly cares ; 
then it must stand the test to which the Lord puts it when 
he says, " Let your loins be girded about, and your lights 
burning ; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their 
lord, when he will return from the wedding ; that, when he 
cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. 
Blessed are those servants, whom the lord, when he cometh, 
shall find watching : verily I say unto you, That he shall 
gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will 
come forth and serve them" (vers. 35-37). There must be 
longing, waiting, watching, working, for the Lord's coming. 
For this good habit, this heavenly grace, of "taking no 
thought" is no mere dreamy, listless attitude of apathetic 
contentment, no epicurean slumber, no selfish sloth, taking 
its sordid ease, and letting the world wag as it may. No ; 
it is active service, busy zeal, earnest working, with eager eye 
and laborious hand, loins girt, lamps burning, all alive and 
alert on the look-out for the Lord's return. The Lord cares 
for you, that you may care for him. He relieves you of 
the charge of anxious thought about your own temporal 
welfare, that you may undertake the charge of anxious 
thought about his heavenly and eternal kingdom. His 
word to you is not merely, " Seek not ye what ye shall eat, 
or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind;" 
but " Go, work in my vineyard." " Be up and doing." 
" Occupy till I come." " And behold I come quickly." 



THOEOUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 155 



IX. 

THOEOUGH-GOING CHKISTIANITY. 

" And an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, 
I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the 
land which I sware unto your fathers ; and I said, 1 will never 
break my covenant with you. And ye shall make no league with 
the inhabitants of this land ; ye shall throw down their altars : 
but ye have not obeyed my voice : why have ye done this ? Where- 
fore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you ; but 
they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a 
snare unto you. And it came to pass, when the angel of the Lord 
spake these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people 
lifted up their voice, and wept. And they called the name of 
that place Bochim : and they sacrificed there unto the Lord." — 
Judges ii. 1-5. 

The sin of Israel, here reproved, consisted in their not 
thoroughly driving out the inhabitants of the land, and 
throwing down all their altars. We do not now inquire 
particularly into the reason and equity, either of the Lord's 
stern decree against the nations that had occupied Canaan, or 
of the manner in which it pleased him to execute his decree 
through the agency of his own chosen and redeemed people. 
In regard to the first of these points, there are some con- 
siderations that ought ever to be kept in view. In the 
original division of the earth and its allotment among the 
tribes of men (Gen. x. 25) this portion of the globe was 
reserved for the future Israel (Deut. xxxii. 8), and the reser- 
vation was most probably intimated to all and sundry at the 
time, that they might make their arrangements accordingly. 



156 THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 

Again, when Abraham was called to be a pilgrim in the land, 
God gave him many testimonies, before all its princes and 
their subjects, of his being the rightful heir and lord ; as in 
the exploit he was enabled to achieve against the five kings, 
and other manifest proofs of the Lord being with him ; while 
in Isaac and after him in Jacob (whose burial in Canaan must 
have signally brought this under the notice of all the people of 
the land), and specially in Joseph's high promotion in Egypt, 
the indications of the Divine purpose to make that family 
owners of the land might have become more and more 
conspicuous and clear to all observers of the ways of God. 
Further, the long-suffering of God waited for them many ages, 
during which he postponed the accomplishment of his pro- 
mise to faithful Abraham (Gen. xv. 16) : nor was it till the 
iniquity of the Amorites was full, that his posterity again 
appeared upon the field, and, on account of their manifold 
abominations, the land vomited out its inhabitants. 

Then, as to the second point, the employment by God of 
his own people as his instruments in this his strange work 
of judgment, let the sovereignty of God be adored • even his 
absolute right to use what means he pleases, and set men to 
what work, or task, or trial, he sees fit. And further, let it 
be considered what the effect might have been ; had Israel 
executed these measures of severity more decidedly in God's 
name, and less in their own, than they actually did ; with 
more of loyal faith in him whose mere instruments they 
were, and less of the admixture of their own policy and their 
own passions ; — more, in short, as acting for God, and less, or 
rather not at all, as acting for themselves. In that case, the 
work of destruction might have been at first even more 
thorough. But calm and pure, free from excess of lust or 
selfish fury, it would have borne the stamp and impress, not 
of the wrath of man which worketh not the righteousness of 
God, but of the severe and solemn majesty of the wrath of 



THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 157 

God himself. And who knows how soon such a war, so 
carried on, under divine sanction, and in a divine spirit, 
might have led to a very different result from that which 
was actually realised, through the removal of some into other 
lands, and the admission of others to the faith and friendship 
of the happy people whose God the Lord was % 

There might have been believing Eahabs in other cities 
besides Jericho. And many might have been brought in faith 
to act the part of the man of Luz, who, in the midst of his 
city's carnage, was saved, being let go with all his house 
(chap. i. 22-26). 

But the chief reason for the sweeping doom denounced 
against the idolatrous nations, their idols and their idolatries, 
had respect to the people of God themselves. And accord- 
ingly, it is with reference to its disastrous effects on their own 
character and history that their sin in this matter is here so 
solemnly and touchingly reproved. They failed to fulfil the 
purposes and commandments of God. 

God, by the hand of Moses, had brought them out of 
Egypt, and led them through the wilderness ; and by the 
hand of Joshua he had given them entrance into Canaan, and 
such a series and succession of victories there as left nothing 
to be done but to gather up the fruits. Nothing remained 
after his decease, but that the several tribes, in their several 
allotted portions, should prosecute the advantage bequeathed 
to them, and, in the strength of God, do summary work on 
the scarce resisting remnant of the nations. 

But far different was their actual conduct. The picture 
here presented to us is that of the people of God, stopping 
short in their career of triumph, not following up and follow- 
ing out the great salvation which the Lord has wrought. 
They thus incur his stern rebuke and questioning. " I 
said I will never break my covenant with you. And ye 
shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land ; ye 



158 THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 

shall throw down their altars : but ye have not obeyed my 
voice : why have ye done this 1 " (ver. 2). 

" Why have ye done this 1 " Many reasons, more or less 
plausible, might be given. They were weary of the wilder- 
ness and of war ; they had had enough of wandering and 
fighting ; they longed for quiet rest and peace. Motives also 
of seeming pity and prudence might sway them : how hard to 
cut off with so fell a swoop, and in one wholesale sacrifice, so 
many hosts and households, of whom some at least might yet 
be reclaimed to Jehovah's service, or made useful, in some 
way, to his people. Then, as these relentings of tenderness^ 
or considerations of expediency, occasioned hesitation and 
delay, their enemies recovered courage, and became formidable- 
again. They lost the time and the tide. Instead of rushing 
on in full career, with all the prestige of Joshua's fame,, 
against the helpless consternation of defeated foes ; they 
had to face, themselves by a natural reaction dispirited 
and listless, armies now sharp and shrewd enough to 
discover that the heaven-aided invaders of the soil might 
yet prove to be but men. No wonder if, under some 
such influences as these, proposals of truce and compromise 
began to be welcome to Israel; and the wisdom of God 
gave way before the policy of man. It was a policy, how- 
ever, alike unwarrantable and disastrous ; unwarrantable, 
considering all that God had done for them, and the assurance 
they had that he would not break his covenant with them 
(ver. 1) ; and disastrous in the issue, for the error was irretriev- 
able. Never afterwards could they be in such favourable cir- 
cumstances for dealing with the nations, their idols and their 
altars. ISTor could the solemn knell ever cease to ring in their 
ears, " Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from 
before you ; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their 
gods shall be a snare unto you " (ver. 3). 

Look at I. the sin ; II. its unexcusableness ; III. its danger. 



THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 159 

I. As to the sin. Let me speak to the young Christian, 
the recent convert, — or to any of you who have recently ex- 
perienced any spiritual awakening or revival so marked as to 
form an era in your soul's history, and give you, as it were, a 
fresh start in the divine life. What now have you more 
urgent on hand than to make good your position and reap the 
full fruit of the deliverance wrought out for you % Now is 
the time for decision. Many circumstances are favourable. 
Your feelings are fresh • you are in the ardour of your first 
love ; being forgiven much, you love much. You have had, 
perhaps, a dark struggle with the doubts and fears of unbelief. 
But you have been enabled to see your warrant for embracing 
Christ as yours ; and in embracing him you have found rest 
and peace. Then, may it not be assumed that your sense of 
sin is keen, your apprehension of the beauty of holiness 
bright and clear, your conscience sensitive, your affections 
warm 1 And, besides all this, it is such a crisis and turning- 
point in your history as demands, and will be allowed by 
every one to demand, a total change in the whole course and 
current of your lives. You are by all means bound, and you 
will on all hands be expected, to come forth from the scene 
and season of your calling, or your revival, with a thoroughly 
altered character, and to pursue henceforth a walk altogether 
different from what was your walk before. Surely it is the 
very time for your making thorough work of your personal 
Christianity. It is the time for dealing a deadly blow to all 
the enemies of your holiness or your peace. What better 
opportunity for carrying fully out the sternest injunctions of 
your Lord regarding them 1 

How does he bid you treat these enemies 1 Mortify your 
members that are on the earth. They that are Christ's 
have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts. If any 
man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up 
his cross, and follow me. Sell that thou hast, and seek treasure 



160 THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 

in heaven. Love not the world, nor the things of the 
world. Come out and be separate, and touch not the unclean 
thing. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of 
darkness. Be holy ; be sober ; let your moderation be known 
unto all men. Confess Christ before men. Speak of his 
testimonies before kings. Abound in every good work. 
Be zealous. Visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction. 
Teach transgressors the ways of God, that sinners may be 
converted unto him. Let your light so shine before men, that 
they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which 
is in heaven. 

I do not now stay to explain these and other similar 
scriptural rules respecting the way in which indwelling 
corruption, with its tendencies, should be dealt with; the 
entire separation from the world which, in the way alike of 
precaution and of protest, a believer should maintain; the 
open testimony he should be ready on all occasions to bear ; 
and the busy and earnest endeavours to do good that should 
ever occupy his time. Far less can I undertake to solve the 
subtle practical questions as to the lawful and the expedient 
that hover beside the doubtful borders of these departments 
of duty. Much must be trusted to a single eye and a con- 
science quickened by the Spirit and enlightened by the Word 
of God. 

But are you really, we ask, going as far, in all these lines 
of holy living, as conscience and a single eye would prompt % 
Take, for instance, any one single sin or sinful tendency ; 
what is your treatment of it in the hour of your spiritual 
deliverance % The lust, — of whatever nature ; — whether pride, 
profligacy, or passion, whether an unruly temper or a disordered 
imagination, or perverted affections and desires, whatever form 
of inward corruption, carnality, enmity against God and his 
holy spiritual law, is the most obstinate in resisting the new 
aspirations of your regeneration ; — the law, in short, in your 



THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 161 

members warring against the law of your mind, and bringing 
you into captivity to the law of sin which is in your members ; 
— How do you deal with it 1 You can well recollect what 
trouble that evil thing gave you, as you darkly struggled 
through the depths of spiritual conviction into the light and 
liberty and love of the glorious gospel of the free, gratuitous 
grace of God ; what endless difficulties it put in the way of 
your simply closing with offered mercy, and accepting offered 
grace ; and how long it was ere you were persuaded to cast 
yourself, in spite of it, or rather by reason of it, just as you 
were, on the all- sufficiency of him whose blood cleanseth from 
all sin. 

So far well But how, when you have attained to enlarge- 
ment and peace ; perceiving that no amount of sin in you, nor 
any feeling of it, ought to hinder your coming to «Christ, or 
can hinder his gracious reception of you, how do you now deal 
with the special evil that had vexed you ? Do you at once, 
promptly and decidedly, do summary execution upon it, as upon 
an enemy to whom no quarter could be given 1 Do you nail it 
to the cross in which you find rest? Do you bring to bear upon 
it the resolution that would cut off a right hand or pluck out 
a right eye % Or are you tempted to treat it after a milder 
fashion 1 Is the charm of your new repose, in the sweet sense 
of reconciliation to your God, too seductive 1 Are you in haste 
to lay down your armour, and passively enjoy the quiet of con- 
scious peace with him 1 Ah ! then, a sort of tenderness of feel- 
ing towards the offending part of you begins to steal into your 
minds. The dream of gaining time and reforming it more 
gradually soothes you. Until, step by step, its presence ceasing 
to be felt by you as incompatible with much of a spiritual 
frame, you are led to tolerate it as an infirmity. Alas ! alas ! 
you may discover too late that you have lost a most precious 
opportunity when you fail to signalise the high day of your 

M 



162 THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 

interest in the sacrifice of Christ, by the unsparing sacrifice on 
your part of the old man and all his lusts. 

Or take another instance. Such a season as I am speak- 
ing of is the very season for remodelling your whole plan of 
life, — its pursuits, its habits, its companionship. You come 
out, believer, from the secret place of your God, where he 
has been speaking peace to you, — you come out into the 
world, a new man ; and now, when all is fresh, and before you 
have committed yourself, now is the very time for arranging 
methodically your general course of conduct and all its details. 
Let but a few weeks or even days elapse, and it may be too 
late. You get entangled and compromised. How are you to 
meet with your former associates ? On what terms and with 
what degree of intimacy 1 What is to be your position towards 
them, their plans and their pleasures ? What will be the posi- 
tion safest for yourselves and most faithful to them 1 Again, 
When and how are you to join yourselves to the company 
commonly called godly, cast in your lot with them, and avow 
yourselves partakers of their toils, their trials, and their joys ? 
What, moreover, are to be your rules for the exercise of pri- 
vate devotion and the cultivation of personal piety 1 What 
your appointed seasons of seclusion, with which nothing* is to 
be suffered to interfere 1 What the means and methods of your 
self-discipline 1 What the system of your studious prepara- 
tion for heaven % 

These, and such as these, are practical questions, which, if 
grappled with in time and with enough of manly vigour, may 
be so settled as to make all your onward path comparatively 
one of plainness, pleasantness, and peace. You may take your 
ground, unfurl] your standard, and announce your watch- 
word, so unequivocally that few ever after will think of try- 
ing to shake or to disconcert you. But alas ! too generally, as to 
all these matters, you have no definite plan of life at all. Some 
vague ideas of what may be best you have floating loosely on 



THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 163 

the surface of your thoughts ; but you have determined 
nothing • you have made up your minds to nothing. And so 
you go forth, and are at sea with' neither chart nor plan of 
voyage, trusting much to impulse, and leaving much to cir- 
cumstances. Hence vacillation, fitfulness, inconsistency, ex- 
cess and deficiency, by turns. The opportunity of setting up 
a high standard and a high aim is lost ; and soon, amid the 
snares of worldly conformity and the awkwardness of the 
false shame that will not let you retrace your steps, you deeply 
sigh for the day of your visitation, when you might have 
started from a higher platform, and run a higher race, than 
you can now hope ever to realise. 

II. The inexcusableness of the sin in question may appear 
from what has been already said, so that a few brief remarks 
here may suffice. Hear the remonstrance which God addresses 
to Israel (ver. 1), and consider his threefold appeal. Look 
back to the past, and call to mind from what a state the Lord 
has rescued you, at what a price, by what a work of power. 
Look around on your present circumstances ; see how the Lord 
has performed all that he sware to your fathers ; the land is 
yours ■ and it is a goodly land. And if, in looking forward 
to the future, you have any misgivings, has he not said, I 
will never break my covenant with you % What can you ask 
more ? A past redemption, a present possession, and, for the 
future, a covenant never to be broken. Are these considera- 
tions not sufficient to bind you to the whole work and warfare 
of the high calling of God, and to make cowardice and com- 
promise exceeding sinful 1 

Oh ! if there be any here, who are still in the first fresh 
morning of their Christian life, their hearts yet warm, and 
their bosoms yet young ; or if there be any who, at some 
communion season or under some providential visitation, may 
have been reawakened, through new acts of repentance and 



164 THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 

faith, to their first love from which they had been beginning 
to fall away ; we beseech you to make full proof of these graci- 
ous dealings of God with your souls. Where were you but 
yesterday 1 Sinking in the horrible pit and the miry clay. 
Where are you to-day 1 With your feet set on a rock, and a 
new song put into your mouth. And will you now hesitate 
and hang back, when God bids you press on to complete 
victory and triumph ; now that you have his own infallible 
assurance, " I will never leave you nor forsake you" ? Let 
your resolutions and endeavours, your vows, and prayers, and 
efforts, your fidelity in ceasing to do evil, your zeal in learn- 
ing to do well, bear some worthy proportion to what God 
has done, is doing, and will yet do, for you. We summon 
you to decision, thorough, out-and-out, resolute decision. We 
call upon you to form for yourselves, or rather to take from 
God's word, a lofty and pure ideal of what practical Christi- 
anity is. No truce, no league, no terms of amity, with the 
world, its maxims or its men. JSTo acquiescence in a mere 
pittance and fragment of the portion God has in store for 
you. 

What ! will you, on the very first apprehension of your 
escape from wrath and your admission to favour, be in haste 
to take your ease, and suffer God's enemies and your own to 
take their ease too ? 

Sweet indeed is the sense of sin freely pardoned through 
the blood of an adequate and all-sufficient atonement; pre- 
cious the first glimpse of his reconciled countenance, beaming 
upon you who are in Christ, with the very same holy com- 
placency with which it ever beams upon him. But thou 
shalt see greater things than these as child of God and soldier 
of the cross. Up then. Eest not, be not satisfied, while 
one inch of the whole breadth of Christian perfection is 
unreached ; while one single element of opposition to God's 
will lurks within you. 



THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 165 

Aim high, we repeat ; resolve bravely ; be decided. God 
will never break his covenant with you ; break ye not your 
covenant with him. And be sure of one thing, that a whole 
is after all far easier, as well as far happier, than a half 
Christianity. The hardest of all bondage is to serve two 
masters. The most hopeless of all tasks is to work out a 
fragmentary salvation. But be working out your whole 
salvation, with that scrupulous, sensitive, conscientious fear 
and trembling which is inspired by the sense of God working 
in you to will and to do of his good pleasure ; go forth at 
once, manfully, honourably, as not almost but altogether 
Christians ; have done at once and for ever with all half 
measures ; be wholly on the Lord's side ; follow the Lord 
fully. Then will all the wretched entanglements of a divided 
choice and doubtful mind be broken as nets from your feet. 
No more embarrassment ; no more hesitancy ; no more hang- 
ing of the head in presence of those to whom, by your facile 
or faithless compliances, you have given an advantage over 
you. Your trumpet will no more give an uncertain sound. 
Your testimony will no more falter. Men will take know- 
ledge of you that you have been with Jesus, and that he is 
ever with you ; and as you run, and are not weary, as you 
walk, and do not faint ; your path will be as " the shining 
light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." 

III. One word, in closing, as to the dangerous and dis- 
astrous consequences of the sin in question. Hear the awful 
sentence of God, " I will not drive them out from before you ; 
but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall 
be a snare unto you" (ver. 3) ; and then see how the children 
of Israel lift up their voice and weep (ver. 4). Well is the 
place named Bochim : it is indeed a melting scene. The 
golden opportunity is lost ; their error is not to be retrieved ; 
its bitter fruits are to be reaped from henceforth many days. 



166 THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 

A sad sight truly; but sadder, if possible, is the spectacle 
of a Christian professor suffering, in after years, from the 
insufficiency of his first works and the first foundation of his 
Christianity ; from his having allowed some evil thing in his 
bosom, some Achan in his camp ; from his having stopped 
short when he should have gone on unto perfection. 

At the time, the shortcoming, the compromise, the unstead- 
fastness and indecision, may be so small and trifling, the 
plague-spot may be so faint, as scarcely to be noticeable at all 
amid much that is promising and fair. But wait a little. By 
and by, the romance, as it were, of the Christian life is over, 
and its real history begins. The every-day duties and trials 
of the Gospel come, in which you have need, not of excite- 
ment, but of patience, that after having done the will of God, 
you may inherit the promises. 

And here, how soon may you have cause to cry out with 
bitter weeping, " Would that I had started fairer for the race ! 
would that I had pitched my song at a higher note, and made 
my footing surer on the rock of my salvation ! would that I 
had set out with a holier standard and a more heavenly aim ! 
that my walk with God had from the first been closer ; my 
communion with him more unbroken and more joyous ■ my 
separation from the world, and the rooting out of sin, in- 
dwelling sin, more thorough and unsparing ! Ah ! I see now 
what steps I might then have taken for following up and 
following out the good work begun • with what ease, com- 
paratively, I might, by God's blessing, have mastered this or 
that besetting lust, and bid a brief and final adieu to this or 
that instance of vain worldly conformity. But woe is me for 
the hard inheritance that now falls to me from my early weak- 
ness and guile ! The root of bitterness that, instead of digging 
clean out of the soil, I was satisfied with cutting down and 
decently covering over, springs up to trouble me ; my half- 
tolerated indulgence of the flesh becomes a thorn in the flesh ; 



THOKOUGH-GOING CHEISTIANITY. 167 

Satan makes it Ms messenger to buffet me ; for lie can well 
avail himself of all my slips and stumblings ; the terms on 
which I have consented to be with the world can scarcely 
now be interfered with ; and altogether, I find myself fondly 
sighing for the lost day of my espousals, when I might have 
learned lessons of holy love hardly to be acquired now, and 
rid myself of drawbacks and encumbrances which now — shall 
I ever shake off 1 " 

Need we remind you of the thousands and ten thousands 
in the professing Christian world to whom such experience as 
this is absolutely fatal 1 They did run well. Once they had 
many movements, many relentings, much even of gladness in 
hearing the gospel message. They made a fair show; they 
seemed to bear fruit ; they were much in earnest, so far as 
they went ; they were lively, active, enthusiastic. But they 
would not go in to possess the whole land. They would not 
slay every foe. And soon they have made shipwreck of their 
faith ; they have returned again to the world and the world's 
folly ; they have drawn back unto perdition. 

Ay, and even if God should not suffer you thus altogether 
to be cast away, oh ! consider what it is to be saved indeed, 
yet so as by fire ; to have a burning in and about you of much 
structure of wood, hay, stubble, scarcely leaving the bare 
foundation for you to stand on at the last. Think what sharp 
dealings on the part of God, in very fatherly love to your 
souls, your uncertain dealings with him and his command- 
ments render necessary ; — what chastenings and stripes ; what 
hidings of his countenance ; what visitations of his displeasure ; 
what seasons of dark depression and gloomy fear ! And, on 
your part, how is your peace marred, your joy broken, your 
usefulness impaired, by the miserable fruits of your half 
measures and partial counsel in God's cause 1 ? Brethren, let 
there be an end of guile. Let your bearing, as freely justified 
by grace and sanctified wholly by the Spirit, be erect, upright 



168 THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 

open. Go ye forth, in the Lord's name to do all his pleasure ; 
so shall ye in the end save your own souls, and save, too, under 
God, the souls of not a few who, smitten with admiration of 
the image which, however feebly, you yet reflect, not broken, 
but entire, may glorify God in the day of their visitation. 
We press, then, a thorough-going decision in Christianity 

1. On you who are starting for the first time, or starting 
anew and afresh after some blessed season of revival, first, for 
your own sakes, that you may not treasure up for yourselves 
future disappointments, falls, backslidings, chastisements, if 
not even utter apostasy and ruin ; secondly, for the glory of 
God and good of souls ; that you may commend the doctrine, 
that you may be free from such inconsistencies as might prove 
stumbling-blocks and offences to inquirers ; that you may win 
souls to Christ. True kindness to the world is faithful separa- 
tion from it. Live not as if you thought, or would encourage 
them to think, that the distinction between your state and 
theirs is small. Live, and show you live, as believing that the 
world lieth in wickedness, and that grace alone, the grace you 
have received, can save others. Live as able to say, " I would 
to God that all ye were not almost, but altogether, such as I am." 

2. On you who are mourning over lost opportunities in time 
past. Let not your grief expend itself in mere idle weeping. 
Seek forgiveness anew by sacrifice. So did the Israelites ; 
so may you. You may thus be again restored, and if not put 
in possession of all the advantage you once might have had 
for a godly life, you may yet be greatly quickened. Eepent, 
do your first works, and your first love may be kindled again. 
Have recourse to sacrifice ; cleave to Christ ; look on him whom 
you have pierced ; look on him as pierced for you ; and learn 
now to hate with a perfect hatred all that is hateful to him, and 
offer the prayer : " Search me, God, and know my heart ; 
try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any 
wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." 



THOROUGH-GOING CHRISTIANITY. 169 

3. On you who are yet strangers to the power and practice 
of the Gospel. "We entreat you to understand what sort of 
Christianity we urge on you ; not such as you see in too many 
professors, — joyless, lifeless, vague, doubtful, undefined. We 
press a whole Christ and a whole Christianity. It is no half 
salvation God offers to you. There are no half measures 
with him ■ all full, free, unconditional, unreserved. Taste and 
see. Come ! be wholly the Lord's. Make fair trial ; not 
half, but whole-heartedly. " Choose you this day whom ye will 



170 THE OATH OF GOD. 



X. 

THE OATH OF GOD. 

" That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God 
to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for 
refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us. " — Hebrews vi. 18. 

The divine oath is one of the mysteries of revelation. To 
one duly considering the majesty of God, and his relation to 
his creatures, nothing can be well more awful than his swear- 
ing to us, and swearing by himself. The form of the oath 
is given frequently elsewhere in Scripture : " As I live, saith 
the Lord" (Num. xiv. 21). But this is the only place where 
the principle or rationale of it is explained. 

The explanation may be considered, first, in its own graci- 
ous nature : What is it 1 and, secondly, in its application : 
What is its manifold use 1 

I. The meaning of the divine oath and its graciousness 
fall to be considered. 

1. The divine oath is represented as analogous to an oath 
among men, and yet different from it. The design in both is 
the same ; it is for confirmation, whether of a fact or of a 
promise ; and so for the ending of all strife, debate, and 
doubt (vers. 16, 17). There is a difference, however, between 
the two oaths, arising out of the difference between the par- 
ties swearing. Men swear by the greater (ver. 1 6). But this 
God cannot do ; and therefore he swears by himself (ver. 17). 
Still the appeal in both cases is virtually the same. When 



THE OATH OF GOD. 171 

I swear, I call in as a witness to the transaction to which my 
oath relates a Being above myself, on whom I am dependent, 
and to whom I am responsible. My oath is a virtual chal- 
lenge to him to come forward and guarantee my truth. Hence 
the security of the oath is practically variable. If I swear 
by one whom I despise or distrust, the oath is a farce. If I 
fear him, while you do not, the oath is valuable to you, simply 
as it tells upon me. If both of us acknowledge the Being 
invoked, the assurance becomes the strongest that can be 
given. 

But what of the divine oath? What are the two im- 
mutable things which the oath of God, swearing by him- 
self, brings upon the field] Some say, the word and the 
oath ; others again, two oaths ; the one being God's oath to 
Abraham (ver. 14) ; and the other, the oath excluding the 
unbelieving Israelites from Canaan (ch. iii.) ; or else the 
oath consecrating Christ to be High-priest (ch. vii.) Both 
explanations are unsatisfactory. Evidently the apostle means 
to show how the solemnity of the divine oath adds weight 
to the simple divine word or promise. But it is a poor way 
of doing so to tell us that the word or promise, and the oath, 
are two separate things ; in that view, two promises without 
the oath would do equally well. And it is a still poorer 
expedient to substitute two separate immutable oaths for the 
two immutable things that give to every divine oath its force 
and sanctity. What can they be but the divine word and 
the divine name or nature 1 

Take first the divine word. That is an immutable 
thing. The word or promise of God is always sure and 
trustworthy. Even when the matter to which it refers is in 
itself indifferent ; still, his word once spoken, — his promise 
once made, — is unchangeable, and fixes the event, under the 
conditions of the word, or the promise, express or implied, as 
certainly as if it were already and irrevocably past. 



172 • THE OATH OF GOD. 

But take in now the second of the two immutable things 
wherein it is impossible for God to lie ; his name, his character, 
his nature, his being and continuing to be such as he is. What 
new security is thus given ? Is it not in substance this : — That 
God discovers to us a ground or reason of what he designs to 
do farther back than the mere sovereign and discretionary fiat 
of his absolute will ; deeply fixed and rooted in the very 
essence of his being ? Is it not that he puts the certainty of 
that to which he swears, not only on the ground of his hav- 
ing intimated it beforehand, but on the ground of a stronger 
necessity, in the very nature of things, and in his own nature ; 
lying far back and far down, in his being God, and being the 
God he is 1 The thing is to be so, not merely because God 
has said it shall be so, but also because it cannot but be so, 
God continuing to be, and to be the God he is. This is 
what, in swearing by himself, he means to tell us. 

It is an amazing thought ! That God, not content with 
giving to you, to all of you who will but do him the justice 
of believing him, his sure word of promise, assuring to you 
eternal life, should open to you the very inmost secret of 
his nature, and its unchangeableness ; and should bid you see 
your salvation bound up indissolubly with his own immutable 
and everlasting glory ; surely that is a great thought. It is 
not merely that you may be saved, on certain terms to be ful- 
filled by you. But, believing in his Son now, you are on such 
a footing with him, in virtue of his free and gracious dealing 
with you as one with his Son, that you cannot but be saved, 
because God lives, and is the God he is ! It amounts to this, 
that your perishing is represented as alike and equally impos- 
sible with God's ceasing to be, or to be what he is. Your 
eternal welfare and God's essential immutability are insepa- 
rably welded together ; blended ; married ; so as to be no 
more twain but one. It is indeed, I repeat, an amazing thought ! 
Well may it be spoken of as an act of superabounding grace 



THE OATH OF GOD. 173 

and condescension on the part of God ; this swearing by him- 
self^ So accordingly it is represented to be. 

2. The graciousness of the oath is as wonderful as its 
meaning. It is indeed more so. Even among men ; if the 
heart is true, and the eye, even turned on empty space, beams 
keen with honour ; there is a certain feeling of repugnance to 
being called to swear. And undoubtedly no one who pos- 
sesses right feeling, as regards the sacredness of a spoken 
word, will volunteer an oath. It is on this principle that our 
Lord gives forth his utterance against not only false but pro- 
miscuous swearing. It is this appeal to the sense of honour 
that really explains his application of the third Command- 
ment. Why should you back your asseverations by solemn 
appeals to heaven, or to earth, or to Jerusalem, or to your own 
head • as if you had power over these things, and might put 
them in pawn for your word 1 But on another ground, why 
should you do so % Is not your doing so, your swearing 
ultroneously, an admission that your simple word is not to 
be relied on 1 ? Why not rather stand on your right to be 
believed for your mere word itself? Let your yea be yea, 
and your nay nay ! " Let your communication be Yea, yea ; 
Nay, nay : for whatsoever is more than these cometh of 
evil." 

Yes ; whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. The 
necessity of superadding to a simple affirmation the solemnity 
of swearing, arises out of the evil that is in man. He is so 
prone to falsehood that his fellow-men are afraid to trust 
him unless they put him upon oath. Nor may he refuse, 
when competently asked, to swear. Tor he cannot claim to 
be held entirely exempt from the general evil of humanity; 
nor can he refuse the security which society is wont to de- 
mand. He cannot deny the reasonableness, and indeed the 
necessity, of the demand. David may have been hasty in 
saying : all men are liars. But the evil, at any rate, is so 



174 THE OATH OF GOD. 

common as to make the adoption of this precaution, for 
which ample divine warrant may be pleaded, an indispens- 
able function, as it is an unchallengeable right, of all lawful 
magistracy. 

Thus, while private and voluntary swearing is virtually 
an ultroneous confession of evil ; public and official swearing 
is a necessary safeguard against evil. I will not, of my own 
accord, swear ; for that amounts to an admission that my 
veracity needs that sort of backing. But I dare not refuse 
to swear when required by legitimate authority. For I 
acknowledge the reasonableness of the suspicion which men 
entertain of all human testimony ; and their right to protect 
themselves by insisting on all the corroboration which the 
most solemn appeal to heaven can give. Still, whatever is 
more than yea yea, nay nay, cometh of evil. It is of evil 
that this practice of swearing, even when most right and 
fitting, cometh among men on earth ; of the evil of men's 
deceitfulness, their proneness to prevaricate and lie. It is at 
the best a necessary evil. 

And is it anything else when it is God who swears from 
heaven? Of that oath also, of that oath pre-eminently, 
may it not be said that it cometh of evil 1 ]!^ot indeed of 
the evil of anything false or suspicious on the part of him 
who swears ; but of the evil heart of unbelief in those to 
whom he swears. Evil ! Does it not come of evil that the 
most high God should be obliged, ere he can hope to be 
believed by the creature he has made, to have recourse to 
the expedient of an oath ? Evil ! Does it not come of evil 
that the Amen, the Eaithful and True, should have to satisfy 
the insulting scruples of doubting men by what you and I, 
when we are shut up to it, feel to be a humiliation all but 
intolerable 1 

"Were ever any of you in the witness-box before a judge 
and jury of your countrymen 1 Had ever any of you ten- 



THE OATH OF GOD. 175 

dered to you, in lowered tone, from the solemn bench, the 
simple but sublime form of words by which our law seeks to 
bind the consciences of all who give evidence before its 
tribunals 1 Could you repeat the words without a sort of 
shudder in your bosom, and a blush almost of shame upon 
your face ? Was it not as if you were wounded in your 
honourable self-esteem ? And were you not inclined still to 
hang your head, even when reflection reconciled you to the 
necessity of the procedure % And you blush still, if not 
for yourself, yet for the evil, the deplorable and universal 
evil, of human falsehood, out of which the stern necessity 
arose. 

And what then are you to think of the evil in you, the 
inveterate evil of a doubting, distrusting, unbelieving heart, 
that makes it necessary for God to take such a step for the 
removal of your miserable questionings and fears ? And what, 
on the other hand, are you to think of that God who, when 
nothing but such a step will suffice, does not refuse to take it ? 
Claim on your part there is none. No right or reason have 
you to ask such a kind of satisfaction from God. Most pre- 
sumptuous, most impious, is your hesitating to receive, with 
instant and unqualified fulness of trust, his mere simple, 
naked, unconfirmed, and uncorroborated word. Truly, it is 
the superabundance of grace, the very excess and overflowing 
exuberance of grace, when he so wonderfully condescends to 
your infirmity as to interpose the sanction of an oath ; and of 
such an oath ! When, swearing by himself, he refers you 
back behind his word to his essential nature ; and opening up 
all that is perfect and glorious and unchangeable in his in- 
effable being and adorable perfections, would convince you at 
last, not only that the things spoken by him will come to pass 
because of what he says, but that they must come to pass 
because of what he is • and that sooner shall he cease to live 
and to possess the all-perfect character that belongs to him, 



176 THE OATH OF GOD. 

than your salvation, believer in Jesus, shall fail of its 
accomplishment, or you, the very least of his little ones, shall 
perish. Such is the virtue, such the grace, of the divine oath. 

II. The uses to which it is applied in Scripture may serve 
still farther to illustrate the real import and the graciousness 
of the oath. It may be considered in two aspects or relations 
in connection with the constitution of the mediatorial economy 
in the person and work of the great High Priest; and in 
connection with the carrying out of that economy. 

We have an instance of the divine oath in connection 
with the mediatorial priesthood of Christ. And what is very 
seasonable and providential, we have an ample inspired ex- 
planation of it, as viewed in that connection. I refer to the 
oracle in Psalm ex. 4, as expounded in Hebrews vii. In 
that exposition much weight is attached to this one point of 
distinction between the Levitical priesthood and that of Christ, 
that in the last there was the interposition of the divine oath, 
which had no place in the other (vers. 20, 22, 28). The 
writer evidently regards this distinction in the constitution of 
the priesthood as materially affecting the character of the 
covenant or dispensation with which it is mediatorially con- 
nected (vers. 21, 22). To be made a priest with an oath is 
not only a higher honour than to be made a priest without an 
oath ; it moreover fits the person so invested with the office 
for being the surety of a better covenant. But how is this 1 
it may be fairly asked. 

Let it be remembered that the oath brings upon the field, 
not only the divine word, but the divine name or nature. 
The priesthood made without the oath is doubtless ordained 
by God. It is ordained, however, not as having its ground or 
reason in the essential nature of God, but as founded upon a 
sovereign and discretionary exercise of his will. The law or 



THE OATH OF GOD. 177 

word of God makes priests of men having infirmity. And, so 
far as it goes, the law or word so appointing them is immu- 
table. The mere announcement of the divine purpose in the 
matter secures its accomplishment. 

But that purpose so announced is not a necessity of the 
divine nature. It is an arbitrary or discretionary act of the 
divine prerogative ; an act upon which God might or might 
not resolve, without the essential perfections of his character 
being at all affected. It is quite otherwise with the arrange- 
ment to which the divine oath refers. 

The priesthood of Christ is no mere arbitrary, discretionary 
ordinance, which, as being expedient to-day, God may institute 
by his sovereign authority in his word or law, and which, by 
the same sovereign authority, he may supersede to-morrow, as 
no longer needed and no longer useful. No ; it is an office 
having its deep root in the very nature, the essential glory 
and perfection, of God himself. It is therefore unchangeable, 
not merely as God's word, but as his very being, is unchange- 
able. The word of God is indeed immutable, under the 
conditions attached to it when it is uttered. But it may be, 
according to these conditions, the basis of what is merely 
temporary, insufficient, and provisional. What is based on 
the absolute immutable nature of God must necessarily be 
both permanent and perfect. 

Consider in this view the two contrasted priesthoods, and 
the two dispensations with which they are respectively con- 
nected. 

Aaron and his successors, the priests made by the law 
without the oath, offer sacrifices and are the mediators of a 
covenant. The law or word of God sanctions both their 
office and their offering.. But there is nothing in the person 
of any of these priests, or in any of the sacrifices offered, that 
makes him or it satisfying and suitable to the divine nature. 
On the contrary, there is a manifest incongruity. They are 

N 



178 THE OATH OF GOD. 

not adequate to the real character and government of God. 
They do not meet the case. A frail mortal, himself a sinner, 
and liable to the doom of sin, never can be such a mediator 
as the holy character and righteous government of the 
offended Lawgiver requires. The blood of bulls and of goats 
can never take away sin. 

Hence, whatever authority the word of the law, or the 
divine appointment in the law, may give to such a priest and 
to his service, neither he nor it has any standing within the 
circle of God's essential and eternal perfections. And both 
he and it, with the economy to which they belong, made 
by a word and by a word dissolved, pass from the world and 
the church of God, as things that decay, and wax old, and 
vanish away. 

But the word of the oath makes a very different high 
priest, and a very different ministry of sacrifice. He who is 
thus made high priest is not a mere man having infirmity and 
not suffered to continue by reason of death, but the Son, who 
continueth ever, consecrated for evermore ; and the sacrifice 
he has to offer is not that of a mere animal victim, alike 
unfit to satisfy a just God and to represent guilty men, and so 
needing to be repeated daily in the courts of an earthly 
tabernacle. It is the sacrifice of himself; the offering of 
himself once, and once for all, in his meritorious obedience 
and in his penal sufferings ; and the presenting of his one 
sacrifice continually before the throne on high. 

Here is a mediator, — here is a mediation, — in true and 
fall harmony with the real nature of God ; and therefore 
truly and fully fitted to meet the real exigencies of men ; a 
worthy mediator, a worthy mediation, for whom and for 
which a far deeper reason can be given than the mere 
discretionary fiat of the sovereign will of God. It is a 
mediator, it is a mediation, that, if constituted at all, must 
be constituted by the word of the oath. For the essential 



THE OATH OF GOD. 179 

attributes and perfections of the Godhead, to which God 
appeals when he swears by himself, are all bound up in this 
great economy. It is not merely in respect of what the 
Father says, that the Son holds the office and discharges the 
functions of High Priest and Mediator ; but also, and much 
more, in respect of what the Father is. 

The successors of Aaron being made priests without the 
oath ; they and their services may all be superseded and 
become obsolete and effete, without any essential feature in 
the nature of God being touched, or any principle of his 
government being compromised. But God himself must 
change, or must cease to live ; before Christ his eternal Son, 
to whom he swears, "Thou art a priest for ever," can cease 
to be an effectual mediator, or his sacrifice to be an all- 
sufficient propitiation ; before his blood can lose its virtue to 
cleanse from all sin, or himself his power to save to the utter^ 
most all that come to God by him ; before the covenant of 
which he is the ever-living Surety can be anything else 
than a covenant of freest, richest grace, of fullest, most 
perfect grace, on whose sure promises men may take hold for 
ever. 

Founded on this primary use, if I may so speak, of the 
divine oath, as bearing on the constitution of the mediatorial 
economy in the person and work of the great High Priest, 
there are other instances of its use in Scripture, connected 
with the carrying out of that economy, to which it may be 
interesting and useful to advert. 

Take these four, in particular ; the Gospel call ; the 
doom of unbelief ; the hope of faith ; the triumph of the 
Church. With all the four, the oath of God is found 
associated. 

1. The divine oath may be viewed in its bearing on the 
Gospel call. In that connection it occurs often virtually; 
and expressly it occurs in this at least among other passages : 



180 • THE OATH OF GOD. 

" As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in 
the death of the wicked ; hut that the wicked turn from 
his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil 
ways j for why will ye die, house of Israel 1 ?" (Ezek. 
xxxiii. 11). 

Thus viewed, the oath of God is peculiarly significant. 
It places the assurance which you may have, all of you, 
any of you, of God's perfect willingness, his earnest 
longing, to receive you hack to himself, on a footing such 
as, if you would hut consider it, must make you feel that 
you dare not doubt, and cannot withstand, his affectionate 
importunity. 

Oh! that the- blessed Spirit would open your eyes here 
to see and understand the real nature, the true character, of 
the God with whom you have to do, the God who so 
pathetically calls you. Oh ! that the Spirit would give you 
such an insight into what God is, as might at last make you 
apprehend how absolutely impossible it is that, being what he 
is, he can be wishing your destruction ; how it is of the very 
essence of his nature and character that he must be willing 
your return to himself. If you cannot believe what God 
says, I beseech you to consider what God is. Ah ! if you 
would but bring yourselves to do that, what a flood of light 
would be let in upon your souls, to chase many a dark thought 
of God for evey away. 

In particular, how irrelevant, and altogether impertinent, 
would you feel all your questionings about his secret purposes 
to be ; how entirely beside and away from the one only con- 
sideration with which you have anything practical to do. 
What ! if one comes to you ; his eye all beaming with melt- 
ing tenderness, and his heart manifestly throbbing with most 
disinterested love j will you, before giving in to his persua- 
sive voice, set yourselves to inquire into what may be his 
secret, ultimate plans ; turning upon the very contingency of 



THE OATH OF GOD. 181 

the sort of reception you may choose to give to his advances ; 
when at a glance you may see what his nature really is, and 
what, in harmony with that nature, his feelings towards you 
must necessarily be 1 " Away ! " you would exclaim, " away 
with all unworthy doubts and misgivings that might be 
started in regard to his ulterior designs ! Enough for me, 
that he is plainly not the kind of person to have any delight 
in my destruction. By that open countenance, and loving 
voice, and beckoning hand, I cannot but feel that he longs 
and yearns for me to be his !" 

Yes, brethren, when God has shown you, in the entire 
economy of grace, and specially in the gift of his dear Son, 
and in the infinite fulness and sufficiency of his great work of 
atonement, what manner of Being he is ; and when, swear- 
ing by himself, appealing to his name, his nature, his open 
heart, he would have you seriously to ask if such a Being 
as he proves himself to be can really be one who issues insin- 
cere invitations and beguiles with hollow hopes ; will you 
not repudiate the thought of making him a liar, and at last 
bring yourselves to believe, the Spirit moving you, that the 
great living heart of the Eternal Father is towards you ; and 
that he is in earnest, and means what he says, when in his 
Son he cries — " Turn ye ; turn ye, why will ye die ? As I 
live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that 
the wicked should turn from his way and live." 

2. The oath of God stands connected with the doom of un- 
belief. " I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into 
my rest" (Ps. xcv. 1 1). This is one of the most impressive and 
awful of all its uses. It is indeed a terrible thought. Eor it 
means that God executes his threatened judgments, not be- 
cause he delights in the infliction of evil ; nor even because 
he is determined to verify his word ; but because, being such 
as he is, even he has no alternative ! Ah ! if sinners had 
nothing more to fear at the hands of God than his reluctance 



182 THE OATH OF GOD. 

even to seem to falsify his threatening word, they might easily 
be relieved from all their apprehensions. The single case of 
Mneveh might set their minds at rest. Certainly, on that 
occasion, God did not show any particular sensitiveness as to 
his own consistency. He did not consider himself committed 
by the mere utterance of his word. Nothing could be more 
absolute and unequivocal, according to all human judgment, 
than the prophecy of Mneveh's doom. But Nineveh repented. 
The reason for the threatened doom, so far as it was founded 
on the nature of God, ceased to exist. And that reason for 
judgment being got rid of, the word which had been uttered 
was not suffered to stand in the way ! 

Oh ! if there be a single soul here, against whom God 
has written some bitter, terrible word of wrath ! — if there be 
one awakened sinner to whom the Holy Ghost is even now 
bringing home the recorded sentence of death, as pronounced 
against him ; — I tell thee, brother, that right gladly will the 
Father even now, this very instant, undo the deed, cancel 
the judgment, reverse the verdict, if thou wilt but now 
turn, and believe, and live. Yes ! Though a thousand cavil- 
lers may raise questions as to how that may consist with the 
immutability of his word,— what matters that to him? — or to 
thee, brother ? Only let thy salvation become consistent with 
his immutable nature, his essential perfections, his invio- 
lable rule and government ; and immediately all the past is 
forgotten. Believe this. Be sure that, in spite of all God's 
righteous denunciations, thy sin is within the reach of pardon. 
For dost thou not see how glorifying it is to his name, as well 
as how grateful to his heart, were it in the face of a whole 
volume of threats, to save sinners in Christ, to save thee, — 
thee, brother, as well as me, who am of sinners the chief? 

All the more awful, however, does the announcement of 
final wrath thus become. To feel that, upon a certain suppo- 
sition, I must perish because God has said it, is a solemn 



THE OATH OF GOD. 183 

enough thought. To feel that, in the case supposed, I must 
perish, not only because God has said it, but because even 
God himself, being what he is, cannot order it otherwise, is 
surely more solemn still. 

Oh ! what weight is there, in this view, in the warning 
drawn from the fate of the Israelites who fell in the wilder- 
ness — -" I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into 
my rest." I sware to them. Their sin was now such as to 
make it not merely inconsistent with my word, but incon- 
sistent with my very nature, to let them find any place of 
repentance, to let them enter into my rest ! 

Consider, friends, the penal severity of God as thus 
grounded. Be sure that it is no sovereign decree merely, no 
discretionary choice, but a stern necessity in the nature of 
sin and of God that renders that severity inevitable. 

What was it that shut up the righteous Father to the inflic- 
tion of the sentence on the head of his own dear Son, when 
he stood before him as the representative of the guilty ? It 
was no mere regard to his own consistency ; no obstinate 
determination simply to do as he had said he would do ; 
that moved the Father to plunge the awakened sword of 
justice into the bosom of the Son. It was a more terrible 
necessity by far ; a necessity lying deep in the divine nature. 
And " if they do these things in the green tree, what shall be 
done in the dry?" "How shall we escape if we neglect so 
great salvation ?" (Heb. ii. 3). 

3. The divine oath is all-important in its bearing on the 
security of the believer's hope. That indeed is its immediate 
application here. 

The question of your progress and perseverance to the end 
has been raised ; by the reproof and exhortation and warn- 
ing contained in the previous passage. Your only safety against 
backsliding and apostasy lies, as you are told, in getting out 
of the mere elements of the gospel viewed as a method of 



184 THE OATH OF GOD. 

personal relief, and passing on to the perfection of insight 
and sympathy, as regards the higher aspects and bearings of 
it, in relation to the glorious name of God. 

But, alas ! one may say, what confidence can I ever have 
in that line 1 The perfection to which I am to go on, alas ! 
how distant. The sin into which I may relapse, alas ! how 
near. What is to give me confidence 1 Is it my own dili- 
gence in following, not slothfully, the saints that have gone 
before ? Or is it my own carefulness to depart from the 
iniquity that dogs my steps behind 1 No, brother. Both of 
these conditions are indispensable, but neither of them is to 
be relied on as giving thee assurance. But thou art in the 
hands of a God whose name, and nature, and character thou 
knowest. And, to put an end to all strife and debate in thy 
heart, he swears by himself to thee. He points to his essen- 
tial perfection. He bids thee consider, not only what he says, 
but what he is ; what thou in Christ hast seen and found 
him to be. And he tells thee that, as surely as he is what he 
is, as surely as he liveth, so surely he pledges himself to 
thee, and must keep faith with thee. 

Frail indeed is thy vessel, as it is tossed on life's troubled 
sea. But it bears the name of the unchangeable Jehovah. 
And as surely as Jehovah liveth, so surely is that vessel safe. 
Far back, in the dateless era of the past eternity, — deep 
down in the counsels of the eternal mind, the cable-chain is 
fixed, — which, winding its unseen way through the ages, 
fastens itself around thy tiny bark, steadying it amid 
ocean's storms. And, shooting out ahead, that same un- 
broken cable-chain reaches on to the haven of rest, and is 
riveted securely there. Thy little bark is out at sea ; but 
the anchor to which the cable-chain is fastened is within the 
veil. And the cable- chain no force of man or devil can 
sever. Hopefully then stand to thy post in that bark, thou 
Christian mariner ! Ply the oars ; set all the sails ; in spite 



THE OATH OF GOD. 185 

of cross currents and baffling winds. Steadily, by the guid- 
ance of that ever shortening cable-chain, thou art moving on 
to the happy shore. Nearer and nearer art thou drawing to 
it. Shorter and ever shorter is that marvellous line becoming 
that joins the vessel to the anchor. Hark ! at last, the roll- 
ing of the eddying surge. One lurch at the bar, and the 
breakers are past. Thy bark is where its anchor of hope has 
long been. Thou art thyself within the veil, " whither the 
forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest 
for ever after the order of Melchisedec " (ver. 20). 

4. One other application of the divine oath I can 
but touch upon • it is the connection in which it stands 
with the ultimate triumph of the Lord's church and cause 
in the world. " Look unto me, and be ye saved, all ye 
ends of the earth j for I am God, and there is none else. 
I have sworn by myself ; the word has gone out of my mouth 
in righteousness, that unto me every knee shall bow, every 
tongue shall swear" (Isa. xlv. 22, 23). The purpose of 
God to fill the earth with the knowledge of himself and of 
his glory is a purpose founded, not upon his mere sovereign 
word, but upon his essential nature. It is no arbitrary 
decree, but an absolute necessity of his very being, which 
requires that the light which has come into the world 
shall ultimately dispel the world's darkness, and that the 
kingdom which the God of heaven has set up in the earth 
shall in the end make all other kingdoms its own. The 
time may seem long ; the struggle arduous and doubtful. 
But as surely as God continues to be the God he is j as 
surely as the Lord liveth ; so surely shall his gospel make 
way among the nations, till all the earth is filled with his glory. 

Many practical lessons might be drawn from this theme. 
I content myself with one closing counsel. Cease from all 
vain speculations as to the secret things, the unknown pur- 



186 THE OATH OF GOD. 

poses, of God. Eest in what lie has revealed to you of him- 
self ; of what he is. Acquaint yourselves with God, and 
be at peace, according to that saying, " They that know thy 
name will put their trust in thee" (Ps. ix. 10.) 

In the case of an earthly friend, your knowledge of his 
nature, your insight into his character, might be expected to 
prevail over many dark surmises and doubtful suspicions, 
which apparent anomalies in his conduct, or rumours and 
speculations about his intentions, might otherwise occasion. 
If he had admitted you to an intimate acquaintance with 
him; if he had opened to you his very heart, his heart of 
hearts, and unveiled to you the essence of his moral being ; 
he might fairly ask you to take many things on trust, and 
suffer many things to remain for a time unexplained, without 
your confidence in him being at all shaken. Especially if, as 
to all that could concern your personal relation to him, and 
your personal friendship with him, he once for all made a 
solemn and affectionate appeal to that nature, that heart 
of his, which he had so fully laid bare to you ; and bid 
you ask yourself, in any moment of hesitancy, if the truth of 
such a nature, if the love of such a heart, could possibly 
fail you ? Ah ! would you not ever after turn a deaf ear to 
every hint that would cast the shadow of a doubt on your 
friend's honoured name 1 Would you not stifle every rising 
inclination to pry into his secrets ? Would you not resolutely 
put away from you every temptation to question his pro- 
ceedings 1 No ! you would say. Perplexing as some of 
these may seem, and capable even of an unfavourable and 
unfriendly construction, I know my friend too well to let 
a single thought dishonouring to him find a moment's lodg- 
ment in my bosom. What he does I may not know now ; 
but I shall know hereafter. Meanwhile, knowing himself, 
what he is, as I do, I will trust and not be afraid. 

Even so know ye the Lord. Come, obtain through 



THE OATH OF GOD. 187 

grace an intelligent and sympathising insight into his very 
nature ; what he is in himself ; God is light ; God is love. 
And then, far back behind any word, in the very being and 
character of your God, you have a ground of reliance not to 
be touched. See the great heart of the eternal Father opened 
to you in his eternal Son ! And be ashamed of your hard 
thoughts, your vain speculations, your endless doubts. Learn, 
the Holy Spirit teaching you, to know and to do justice to 
the God and Father of your Lord Jesus Christ ; his Father 
and your Father ; his God and your God ; and to say, with 
one who had less knowledge of him by far than you may 
have, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him " (Job 
xiii. 15). 



188 THE INDWELLING WOED OF CHRIST. 



XL 

THE INDWELLING WOED OE CHEIST. 

" Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." — Colossians hi. 16. 

This exhortation is connected, on the one hand, with the 
preceding experience out of which it springs (vers. 14, 15) ; 
and, on the other hand, with the outward expression in 
which it issues and finds vent (ver. 16.) But it is complete 
in itself, and may be so considered. 

The word of Christ here spoken of can scarcely mean his 
personal teaching merely. It must be held, as I apprehend 
it, to embrace the whole revelation of him, which we have 
from himself in Scripture ; the whole Bible, in short. Only 
it is the Bible viewed in a peculiar light ; not as a book 
written about Christ ; nor even as a book virtually written 
by Christ, long ago, but as his present word ; the medium 
of his present communication of his present mind and will ; 
affording the means and materials of present speech ; the 
organ through which he personally confers with us, here 
and now. 

The phrase " dwell in you " must therefore be taken in 
a strictly personal sense. It is not to be diffused and 
evaporated, as if it referred to the Church collective ; the 
general body of professing Christians. It is here, as else- 
where in Paul's writings, altogether personal, individual. 
Take some instances : " If the Spirit of him that raised up 



THE INDWELLING WOED OF CHEIST. 189 

Jesus from the dead dwell in you" (Rom. viii. 11). " God hath 
said, I will dwell in them " (2 Cor. vi. 1 6). " That Christ may 
dwell in your hearts by faith " (Ephes . iii. 17). " The unfeigned 
faith that is in thee ; which dwelt first in thy grandmother 
Lois, and thy mother Eunice ; and I am persuaded in thee 
also " (2 Tim. i. 5). " That good thing which is committed 
unto thee keep, by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us " 
(2 Tim. i. 14). Of these five instances, only one, the second, 
can admit of the diffusive or collective interpretation. And 
even that is better rendered, as individually and personally 
applicable, " I will dwell in them." I proceed therefore, 
on that understanding of the exhortation, to speak first of 
the word of Christ dwelling in you ; and, secondly, of the word 
of Christ dwelling in you richly. 

I. Let the word of Christ dwell in you. This mere in- 
dwelling of the word of Christ in you at all is a great thought. 
It is a great experimental attainment. Consider some of 
the conditions of its practical and personal realisation. 

1. It implies a sense of the preciousness of Christ him- 
self ; his preciousness to them that believe ; his preciousness 
realised by faith. No one's word will dwell in you, unless 
he is precious to you whose word it is. The word of one who 
is to you himself an object of dislike will be angrily or 
contemptuously rejected, after it has stung you to resentment. 
The word of one who is to you an object of indifference will 
pass swiftly by you, or through you, without effecting any 
abiding lodgment within you. 

How much of the word, as the word of Christ, may you 
thus miss, if Christ himself personally is not precious to you ! 
In many parts of the Bible you think that Christ is only 
very dimly and distantly to be found, if he is to be found at 
all. Whole chapters and books are read, without their sug- 
gesting to you anything that can be called the word of 



190 THE INDWELLING WORD OF CHRIST. 

Christ ; or what may come home to you as Christ speaking, 
and speaking to you. Even passages that are fullest of 
Christ, of his own sayings and actions, do not bring Christ 
himself before you, as speaking personally to you. 

But it is only when it does that, and in so far as it does 
that, that the Bible, or any portion of it, is practically and 
innuentially the word of Christ to you. The letter of an 
absent friend is his word to me, when by means of it I 
conjure him up, and call him before me, as himself, in his 
own loved person, speaking to me. Then his word takes 
hold on me, and dwells in me. Christ is not an absent friend. 
He is present with me when I search the Scriptures which 
testify of him. He is here living and present with me, as I 
read or listen. If he is precious to me, as believing in him, 
I must feel him, and realise him to be here ; living and 
present here now with me ; to teach me, at every step ; 
upon every holy text, and every sacred saying j what I am 
to regard as his present word to me, here and now. 

Thus, through my love to him and his preciousness to me, 
even what of Scripture may seem to have little or nothing 
of Christ may become his word to me. Lord Jesus ! what 
hast thou to say to me, here and now ; by thy Spirit taking 
of what is thine, and showing it to me ; about such a seem- 
ingly Christless passage as this or that 1 — a passage, at first 
sight, so empty of thee? What is thy word to me, here 
and now, in it and about it 1 What is its bearing on thee 
and on me, here and now 1 Speak, Lord, for thy servant 
heareth. 

2. The preciousness of Christ's word, as well as of Christ 
himself, is essential to its dwelling in you. This indeed fol- 
lows as a natural and necessary consequence. If Christ is 
precious, his word must be precious. Still, this inference 
may suggest a new line of thought. The word of a precious 
friend is precious to you in itself ; almost before you know 



THE INDWELLING WOED OF CHRIST. 191 

■what it is, and what it contains. You take it on trust before- 
hand, and welcome it, even before examination, as the word 
of your beloved. The very outside of a letter from him is to 
you a welcome sight. 

But your friend's word becomes unspeakably more precious 
when you study it particularly • and especially when you 
test experimentally its special suitableness to your case ; when 
you find it to be of real value to you in your present circum- 
stances, here and now. It is so, may it not be so, with the 
Bible as the word of Christ to you 1 Is there any passage of 
Scripture that is at this moment, or has been, say last night 
or this morning, much in your thoughts ? Is it a passage 
which Christ has just been using, or has formerly used, as 
the means of his speaking to you by his Spirit a word in 
season when you were weary 1 The preciousness of it, as the 
word of Christ here and now to you, felt to be so, will 
make it dwell in you. 

I suppose there is scarcely one of you who cannot name 
some text or portion of Scripture, in itself apparently rather 
barren of spiritual meaning and unction, having in it, one 
would say, little or nothing of Christ, or of what is Christ's, 
which somehow has got to be one of your best remembrancers 
of Christ ; a frequent and favourite visitor of your soul ; and 
a visitor always suggestive of Christ ; of Christ speaking to 
you, by means of it, some word in season in your weariness. 
You say it is association. The law of association explains 
the experience. And so far it does. The scriptural text or 
passage is connected in some marked way with some marked 
crisis in your spiritual history. In some critical exigency, 
among other Bible sayings seemingly much more to the pur- 
pose, this one has somehow come up ; as a whisper of consola- 
tion from the lips of Jesus in your deep distress ; or a breath 
of his pity stealing into your sin-laden and sorrow-laden 
soul j or a faint murmur presaging the loud trump of wrath, 



192 THE INDWELLING WORD OF CHEIST. 

if you are on the point of giving way to temptation. So it 
has struck you. And so it leaves its sting and its solace 
in you. 

Well, -what is that experience % Is it not the word 
realised by you, in this one particular instance, realised by 
you experimentally, as precious, practically precious, making 
itself felt as the word of Christ dealing with you personally 
in it, the precious word of a precious Christ 1 

Now what should hinder the whole Bible, in all its 
minute details, as well as in its general scope and substance, 
from thus becoming to you, not as a whole, but in its 
minutest parts, the word of Christ, and as such dwelling in 
you 1 For, in this practical point of view, it matters little or 
nothing what theory of the Christology of Scripture you may 
adopt. How, and how far, particular books or verses of 
Scripture bear on Christ's person and work ; whether his- 
torically or symbolically, in prophecy or in psalmody, is 
not the question here. There need be no straining of 
Scripture to make it always and everywhere redolent of 
Christ. !No ; you may use it freely, in all its books and 
chapters and verses, according to the nature of their several 
contents, just as you would use the miscellaneous writings of 
any author ; only with a reverential remembrance of who 
the author in this case is. 

For I point to a quite different, and altogether peculiar and 
unique way, of seeking and finding Christ and his word all 
through the Bible. It is the way, not of getting it to speak 
to you about Christ, but rather of getting Christ to speak to 
you about it ; and so to make it all his. In plain terms, let 
it all, every bit and fragment of it, be welded into your 
Christian experience, and become part and parcel of it. Let 
there be nothing in it that is not somehow, in your expe- 
rience, connected with Christ ; with Christ living in you, 
with Christ in you the hope of glory. 



THE INDV7ELLING WOED OF CHEIST. 193 

Do you ask how this may be ? I answer, by the Spirit 
being given in answer to the prayer of faith. He teaches you 
all things ; whatever Christ has said. He teaches you them 
all as said by Christ. Some of them may be things which 
are in themselves far enough away from Christ ; with little 
of Christ in them. But dwell, in the Spirit, even upon what 
in Scripture may seem to be most Christless. Do not force 
it to testify of Christ formally, whether explicitly or impli- 
citly, so as to offend critics and perplex ordinary readers. 
Take it all in its plain meaning. But expect that in it, and 
by means of it, Christ may have something to say to you ; 
some lesson to teach ; some comfort to impart ; some reproof 
to administer ; some quickening impulse or influence to apply. 
Dwell on it, in that view. Pray over it. Link on the most 
unpromising text with some personal dealing of the Spirit 
with your soul. Merge it in your present spiritual expe- 
rience. And I venture to assure you that, however little of 
Christ there was for you in the dead letter of that text before, 
it will henceforth, whenever it recurs to you, be instinct with 
life as the word of Christ ; his living word to you at the time ; 
and as such, it will be very precious. 

3. The felt preciousness of real present and living inter- 
course between Christ and you will cause the word, as his 
word, to abide in you. For it is his word that sustains and 
keeps up the intercourse. It is the word, as his word, that 
is the manual, as it were, or handbook of his conversation 
with you j and consequently also the manual or handbook of 
your conversation with him. It is in that character and 
capacity mainly that it is to dwell in you. It is for conver- 
sational purposes, and, as it were, colloquial uses. I would 
have this statement plainly and familiarly understood. It 
embodies a principle of great practical importance. You are 
to abide or dwell in Christ, and Christ in you. This mutual 
or reciprocal abiding of you in Christ, and Christ in you, is 

o 



194 THE INDWELLING WOKD OF CHKIST. 

through, that which you have heard from the beginning 
abiding in you ; or otherwise, through his word dwelling in 
you. For, whatever there may be of the supernatural — and 
it is all supernatural — in this communion between Christ and 
you, his dwelling in you and your dwelling in him; it 
is yet so far natural, that it may be, and must be, realised in 
the natural and ordinary way of communication and fellow- 
ship between intelligent beings knowing and recognising one 
another. It must partake of the character of conversation, 
or conversational intercourse, of a verbal sort. There cannot 
really be any conscious communion, any interchange of mind 
with mind, or heart with heart ; none at least that can be sus- 
tained for any length of time, or that can impress itself per- 
manently on the consciousness and the memory ; no indwell- 
ing of my heart and mind in you, or of your heart and mind 
in me, without language ; spoken or written language ; or 
language, if you will, of the silent embrace, the look, the tear ; 
more expressive of intelligence, at certain seasons, than any 
words. I put no faith in any other sort of union and com- 
munion between you and me than such as language may and 
must interpret and define. I put as little faith in any other 
sort of union and communion between you and Christ. It is 
all apt to be quite mystical, fantastic, fanatical ; visionary and 
ideal ; except in so far as it is articulate, conversational, 
and verbal. 

There is room for self-deception here. We may dream of 
our being in Christ, and Christ being in us, after some vague, 
undefined, sleepy fashion ; whence comes a sort of quiet and 
quiescent half-unconscious resting of him on us, and of us in 
him. Is it more than a dream, or dreamy delusion, if there 
is not actual converse and talk between us — verbal converse, 
colloquial talk 1 Of course, it may not be converse or talk so 
audibly carried on as to be overheard by men or angels. It 
may not be put in express and formal terms when Christ and 



THE INDWELLING WORD OF CHRIST. 195 

you are alone together ; he alone with you alone ; in the 
closet, with the door shut. He and you do not make speeches 
or write letters to one another. Much may be understood 
silently between him and you : much that is unutterable. 
But still, consider the case of Paul, in his highest heavenly 
rapture. Paul heard words ; words unspeakable no doubt ; 
unlawful or impossible for a man to utter. But still he heard 
words. The rapturous insights and emotions found verbal 
expression. Words were used. Much more in your case ; 
even when your abiding in Christ and his abiding in you par- 
takes of the closest, warmest, most loving kind of embrace, 
silent and deep, the strange flowing into one of his love and 
your faith ; words may come in. Nay, in such experience 
especially words should come in ; to chasten the experience, 
and give it a definite voice and a definite aim. And the 
words should be articulate and clear ; whether uttered or not. 
They should still be words ; thoughts and feelings becoming 
verbal ; formed into sentences more or less broken ; but yet 
such as may suffice for carrying on real personal conver- 
sation. 

Thus, words must be used to bring the fellowship into in- 
telligible shape, and turn it to practical account ; as real and 
personal. What have you to say to one another, what are you 
saying to one another, in this hour of mutual confidence and 
unreserved intercourse'? That is the question. What are 
you saying to him 1 What is he saying to you? So he him- 
self puts the manner of this intercourse — " If ye abide in me, 
and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it 
shall be done unto you" (John xv. 7). There is speech here, 
articulate speech, on both sides; Christ's words abiding in 
you ; and your asking what you will. " If a man love me, 
he will keep my words ; and my Father will love him, and 
we will', come unto him, and make our abode with him" (John 
xiv. 23). How is this to be realised? How, but by the 



196 THE INDWELLING WOKD OF CHRIST. 

Holy Ghost " teaching you and bringing to your remembrance 
all things whatsoever Christ hath said unto you" 1 Still it is 
speech, intelligible and articulate speech, that is the means or 
medium of communion. There is, I repeat, no real, trust- 
worthy indwelling of you in Christ, or of Christ in you, on 
any other footing. None. For the pointed, personal, prac- 
tical question is not to be resented or evaded. What is your 
conversation 1 What is your talk ? What are you speaking 
about ? What are you saying to one another 1 

That you may meet this question, without resenting it or 
evading it, let the word of Christ dwell in you. For it is his 
word that is the staple of the verbal and conversational inter- 
course in question. It is the word, as Christ's. For in this 
talk, to use the plainest terms, he must take the lead. He 
suggests the topics. He supplies the vocabulary. His word 
is the safe guide and full storehouse of the conversation ; not 
his word merely, as the general body of Scripture testifying 
about him and inspired by his Spirit ; but his word in detail, 
brought home to you personally, as his word to you. It may 
be co-extensive with all Scripture. It should be so, and will 
be so, the more we study all Scripture as his. But, at any 
rate, that word of Christ, the word thus experimentally re- 
alised as his, in whole or in part, is the medium of communi- 
cation between him and you. He uses it in speaking to you. 
And you use it in speaking to him. 

Thus used, it will dwell in you. Otherwise, it will go 
away. The letter may remain. Strings of texts, verses in 
abundance, whole chapters and books, may continue with you 
fitfully or dreamily. The instinct of memory may mechani- 
cally, as it were, recall them ; and the tongue may fluently and 
glibly quote them. But the virtue is gone out of them. The 
savour, the unction, of there being Christ's word in them to 
you, is lost. They are not to you the word of Christ dwelling 
in you. If you would have the word to dwell or abide in 



THE INDWELLING WORD OF CHRIST. 197 

you, as the precious word of a precious Saviour, you must let 
it be in you useful and available ; always turned to account ; 
for the keeping up of real, personal, precious intercourse be- 
tween him and you. Let it all, every portion of it, as it 
comes up in your thoughts, take shape virtually and mentally 
as a dialogue. Let it be a real dialogue. Let me, before 
suffering any passage of Scripture that has arrested, impressed, 
moved me, to pass away from me, make it the occasion and 
the means of my saying so and so to him, and his saying so 
and so to me. 

No Scripture thus used will pass away. The word of 
Christ, as the precious word of a precious Saviour, realised 
as the means of a most precious, because real and personal, 
converse, between him and you, will assuredly dwell in you 
richly. 

II. " Eichly ! " This qualifying word may apply in more 
senses than one. It must do so; for it touches a rich subject. 

1. It may refer to quantity. Let the word of Christ dwell 
in you abundantly, copiously. Let there be plenty of it, 
rich plenty. Let the mind be richly stored, let the soul be 
richly furnished, with the word of Christ ; the word as he 
sets his seal to it as his, and by his Spirit makes it in your 
experience his very word to you. Ah ! how much is there of 
the Bible that does not dwell in you because you do not 
recognise and realise it as the word of Christ ; his present 
word to you. Whole chapters there may be that have not, 
in your consciousness, become linked to any gracious dealing 
of Christ with you. These will not dwell in you. But let 
them become part and parcel of your inward personal experi- 
ence of Christ communing with you. Let all Scripture be 
thus applied. There will be a rich abundance of the word 
of Christ dwelling in you. 

2. The term "richly" may have respect to quality as 



198 THE INDWELLING WOED OF CHRIST. 

well as quantity; not merely to the amount of matter, as it 
were, lodged in you ; but to the kind of matter ; its inherent 
energy and influence. The term richly may have, in some 
sense, an active signification. A rich manure is a manure 
that enriches the soil. And it dwells in the soil richly in 
proportion as it enriches the soil ; turning its dry and hard 
sterility into rich and unctuous and fruitful mould. So let 
the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Let it dwell in you 
so as to enrich your souls. 

Here too, if it is to dwell in you richly in this sense, it 
must dwell in you as the word of Christ. In this view, that 
is especially needful. For such is the poverty of the soil ; 
and not its poverty only, but its intractable perversity ; that 
otherwise even the word will, instead of enriching the 
soul in which it is made to dwell, become itself partaker 
of its blight and barren deadness ; and end in being as salt 
which has lost its savour, incapable of seasoning or quick- 
ening anything. 

Is not this Paul's testimony 1 The letter killeth, but the 
Spirit giveth life ; making it truly the living word of a 
living Christ. Let it so dwell in you ; enriching your whole 
inner man ; pouring ever anew and afresh into you, — shed- 
ding abroad ever anew and afresh in you, — rich and full 
discoveries and experiences of Christ's own love and the 
Father's. Is it not as the pouring out of a rich ointment, 
pervading with its rich unction, filling with its rich odour, 
the whole house or chamber of your inmost soul 1 

Ah ! how penetrating as well as powerful should be the 
virtue of this indwelling in you of the word of Christ ! 
How should it reach to every nook and corner of your 
outward and inward life ; smoothing all asperities, sweeten- 
ing whatever is sour, softening whatever is hard, breaking 
the very stones, melting the iron ore, impregnating with 
the very meekness and gentleness of Christ the dreary 



THE INDWELLING WORD OF CHRIST. 199 

wildness of those once unsubdued and unruly hearts of 
yours, and turning them into gardens of rich divine 
husbandry, out of whose broken depths the fruit of the 
Spirit may richly grow. 

3. This rich indwelling of the word of Christ in you 
may be held to correspond to the riches of him whose word 
it is ; to be in some measure proportioned to his own riches. 
And what are these % Riches of all sorts ; of goodness ; of 
glory ; of wisdom ; of knowledge ; of grace ; exceeding 
riches of grace ; the unsearchable riches of Christ. It is the 
word of this rich one that is to dwell in you richly • to 
dwell in you as making you partakers with him in his riches, 
in all his riches, unsearchable as they are. 

4. It is to dwell in you, not only as rich receivers, but 
as rich dispensers also, of the riches of him whose word it is. 
If it dwells in you richly, it must go forth from you richly ; 
copiously ; abundantly ; freshly ; in full and living flow. 
Freely you receive ; and freely you give ; of the word of 
Christ dwelling in you richly. Eichly endowed by the word 
of Christ dwelling in you richly, you are to be richly pro- 
ductive j richly fruit-bearing ; rich in faith ; rich in good 
works ; rich in all bountiful and practical exhibition of the 
unsearchable riches of Christ; after a free, bold, joyous fashion. 

; For here, ere I close, let me ask you to notice the social 
bearing of the precept in the text, as imbedded in the con- 
text. On the one hand, it is associated with the preceding 
context. " Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and 
beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, 
meekness, long suffering ; forbearing one another, and forgiv- 
ing one another, if any man have a quarrel against any ; even 
as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these 
things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And 
let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also 
ye are called, in one body ; and be ye thankful" (vers. 12, 15). 



200 THE INDWELLING WORD OF CHRIST. 

Here are gracious elements ; "bowels of mercies, kindness, 
humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering, forbearance, 
and forgiveness ; Christ-like forgiveness ; charity, as the bond 
of perfectness ; the peace of God ruling in the heart ; unity 
thence ; and thankfulness. On the other hand, it is associated 
with what follows — " In all wisdom, teaching and admonish- 
ing one another, in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs ; 
singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord" (ver. 16) ; 
wise teaching and monition ; decent and devout singing. 

In either view, this indwelling in you of the word of 
Christ is not the indwelling in you of what is hard, dry, 
stiff, formal; like a mass of dead matter crammed into a 
dead receptacle ; as bales of goods are packed in a warehouse ; 
or loads of unread learning are crowded on the shelves of a 
library, kept mainly for show. It is the indwelling in you 
of what is free and fresh and living as the breezes of heaven ; 
gushing, flowing, as Jordan's full flood or Jacob's well ; or 
say rather, as the water of which Christ spoke to the woman 
at Jacob's well, when he said, "The water which I shall give, 
shall be in you a well of water, springing up into everlast- 
ing life." Then, "out of the abundance of the heart, the 
mouth speaketh." Let the abundance of the heart be the 
word of Christ dwelling in you richly. Then it will be no 
dead letter, but a living spirit; Christ in you, the hope of 
glory. 

Let the word of Christ so dwell in you. Let it be Christ 
himself, dwelling in you ; Christ himself, the living word. 
Let his word, or himself the word, dwell in you richly ; 
moulding, fashioning, vivifying, regulating, your whole inner 
man ; all its powers, faculties, affections ; its susceptibilities 
and sensibilities ; its movements of will. Let his word, let 
himself in his word, give his own tone and temper to all your 
emotions of joy and sorrow ; of fear, or anxiety, or love, or 
hope. Let all within you be thus imbued, not stiffly and 



THE INDWELLING WO.KD OF CHEIST. 201 

artificially, but spontaneously and gladly, with the word 
of Christ dwelling in you richly by the Spirit; and so 
becoming Christ himself dwelling in you as the word of life. 
Then, let there go forth from you, not stiffly and artificially, 
but spontaneously and gladly and lovingly, streams of over- 
flowing benignity and benevolence ; rich and gracious influ- 
ences of holy zeal and love and joy ; to the glory of God, 
celebrated in songs of praise ; and the edifying of the church, 
in wise teaching and admonition. 

In conclusion, let the three following counsels suffice for 
practical application of our theme or text. 

1. Make sure of the first condition of the indwelling of 
Christ's word in you ; the preciousness of Christ himself. 
This implies you dealing with Christ personally ; closing 
with him in his dealing with you ; and so finding him to be 
precious. Ah ! make sure of that ; whoever you are, what- 
ever you are, to look to Christ now. Embrace him now. Let 
him embrace you now. Let there be a close and affectionate 
mutual embrace between him and you. 

2. See to it that nothing is allowed to dwell in you that 
may be apt to hinder the indwelling in you of the word of 
Christ, Mortify, therefore, your members which are on the 
earth. And beware of allowing any root of bitterness to lurk 
in you unseen and unconfessed; which yet springing up 
may trouble you. 

3. Make full proof of all suitable helps for the indwell- 
ing of the word of Christ in you. Especially, put it to use. 
When you enter into your closet and shut the door ; it is not 
for vague musing or melancholy dreaming : it is for real, per- 
sonal, articulate, converse with Christ ; for private, confi- 
dential talk, if you will. "What a demand is there here for 
the word of Christ abiding in you richly. Doubtless, the 
Spirit conducts the intercourse. But he must have materials. 



202 THE INDWELLING WORD OF CHEIST. 

And they are furnished in the word of Christ. For the 
Spirit would not have all to be inarticulate sighing or 
unutterable groaning in the fellowship which he constitutes 
and sustains. He will minister even in that extremity ; in 
that sad experience. He helpeth our infirmities (Rom. viii. 
26). But, ordinarily, he would have us to use speech ; not 
load, but though low, as in a whisper, still clear. "What 
have I to say to thee 1 "What hast thou to say to me 1 



CHEIST THE ONLY GAIN. 203 



XII. 
CHEIST THE ONLY GAIN. 

" That I may win Christ, and be found in him." — Philip pians hi. 8, 9. 

This is perfect security and consummate blessedness. The 
language indicates at once a goal and a starting-post ; an 
end and a beginning ; that I may win Christ, the goal or 
end I have been seeking to reach ; that I may be found in 
him, ready, not only for resistance to old adversaries, but 
for a new start and onward movement towards divine 
perfection. 

"That I may win Christ." Observe how this idea of 
winning Christ fits into the apostle's previous statement of 
his experience. He speaks of certain things which he had 
been accustomed to regard as gain (ver. 7). He enumerates 
some of them (vers. 5, 6). They are all of them spiritual 
privileges or attainments ; qualifications valuable in a religious 
or spiritual point of view. No doubt they secured to one 
possessing them, — and especially to such a one as Paul, — a 
large measure of what men are wont to covet as prizes in this 
world. Never man surrendered a more hopeful career than 
Paul did when he became a Christian. But it is not to any 
loss .of that nature that he here points. The things in 
respect of which he once thought he might trust in the flesh, 
he prized not as giving him a good standing before men, but 
as giving him a right standing in the sight of God. In that 
view they were gain to him. But he was led to count them 



204 CHEIST THE ONLY GAIN. 

loss. " I have done with them all," he cries. " I count 
them hut dung, if, instead of them, I may win Christ." 

"That I may be found in him." For if only I once 
win Christ, then, whosoever seeks me finds me in Christ. 
Whatever may be the purpose for which I am sought, I am 
found in Christ. Is it, on the one hand, that I may meet 
and answer old charges brought against me? I am found in 
Christ (ver. 9), not having mine own righteousness, which is 
of the law, but that which is of the faith of Christ, the 
righteousness which is of God by faith. Is it, on the 
other hand, that I may merge the past in the future; for- 
getting things behind, reaching forth unto things- before, 
pressing towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of 
God in Christ Jesus? Still let me be found in Christ (vers. 
10, 11), "that I may know him, and the power of his 
resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made 
conformable unto his death ; if by any means I might attain 
unto the resurrection of the dead." 

Let us consider — 
I. What it is to win Christ. 

II. What it is to be found in Christ. 

I. To win, to gain (xs^jjCw, ver. 8) Christ, is — 1, to count 
him gain (%sgd?i, ver. 7) ; 2, to covet and seek him as gain ; 
3, to appropriate him as gain ; 4, to enjoy him as gain. 

1. To count Christ gain. Once, my circumcision, my place 
in a pious family, my strict sect, my fervid zeal, my blame- 
less observance of the law — these, and the like gifts and 
endowments, were, in a religious view, as grounds of confi- 
dence, gain to me. Now I count them all loss for Christ. 
Christ is now to me what these other things were, gain. 
Christ alone is, in that view, the only gain. There is here a 
great change of mind from what is natural to us. There is 
an entirely new estimate of gain and loss. And observe 



CHEIST THE ONLY GAIN. 205 

what is the object in question with reference to which this 
new estimate of gain and loss is formed. It is my standing 
before God, my relation to him, my acceptance in his sight. 
"What is gain to me is what puts me on a right footing with 
God. This I once thought that my personal qualifications of 
birth, profession, privilege, attainment, might do. Now I 
see that for any such purpose they are useless, and worse 
than useless. In the view of the end for which I once 
prized them, I now perceive that Christ is gain. There is 
much implied in your really, with true conviction, perceiving 
this. 

(1.) You are in earnest as regards the end with reference 
to which you estimate what is gain. That end is your being 
in a position (ver. 2) to worship God in the spirit and with 
joy; your being entitled to have confidence in his presence ; 
your being upon terms of favour with him. Now, are you 
in earnest here 1 Is your standing before God really matter 
of concern to you 1 Is the question a serious one with you, 
Do I stand well with my God 1 Is it felt to be vital 1 

Naturally it is not so. You care little, or not at all, for 
the righting of your position towards God. You may care for 
your being safe in the position in which you are. You may 
have some anxiety about the consequences of continuing in 
that position, and some desire to evade or to escape from 
them. You may prize and welcome any device that looks 
that way. The trees of the Lord's garden to hide among ; 
fallen fig-leaves sewed together to cover your nakedness ; 
these are in that view gain to you. As to anything more ; 
as to what God thinks of you, how God feels towards you, 
what you are to him and he is to you, — as to all that, — alas ! 
how indifferent and unconcerned can you be ! 

Is it otherwise with you now % Is it a distress to you, — 
a real grief, — that there should be any misunderstanding 
between you and your Maker % Are you so smitten with a 



206 CHRIST THE ONLY GAIN. 

sense of his glorious and amiable majesty, and the misery of 
your being outcast from him, that no mere measure of indul- 
gence on God's part, and no imagination of impunity on your 
part, can content you now 1 Ah ! you cry, I would not 
merely reckon on the chance of somehow not being con- 
demned at last. I desire to stand right with my God now. 
I care not, in comparison, for mere impunity. It is not 
exemption from suffering I solicit. I think I may almost 
say I could accept the punishment of my sins. But, oh ! 
I want this long and dreary warfare between my Maker and 
myself to be well ended. I would fain see how again all 
between us may be peace 1 Is that, or anything like it, your 
desire 1 

Then (2) it is no wonder that what things were gain to 
you are now counted loss. There are many things a man 
may have about him, many things he may do, that may have 
a certain kind of value, if all he cares for is the patching up 
of a sort of truce or compromise with God, — or rather not 
so much with God as with his own conscience. Eut how 
worthless are they all when the question comes to be, Are 
God and the man personally to be thoroughly at one 1 For 
in truth they have no real bearing on that question at all. 
They may be thought perhaps to have an efficacy as modi- 
fying or mitigating the results of the relation already sub- 
sisting between the parties. But the relation itself they do 
not touch. They do not cancel guilt. They profess only to 
supply a sort of set-off against it. They do not overcome 
alienation. They can only serve to dissemble and disguise 
it. They do not establish cordial faith and love. Bather 
they are to be taken as a substitute for these affections ; as 
making up for the want of them. The things in respect 
of which I once thought I might have confidence in the 
flesh — my Christian birth, my baptism, my strict profession, 
my freedom from gross vice, my punctual devotion, my 



CHEIST THE ONLY GAIN. 207 

zealous service, — what are they all now to me, when I am 
made to feel that there is something originally, radically, 
fatally, wrong in the footing on which I am with my 
God, and that I never can be happy or free or loving 
until that is righted ? I may increase my painstaking in 
every pious duty. I may strain every nerve in trying to 
do good and to be good. I may wage a fierce warfare with 
the evil that is in me. I may chastise and mortify myself. 
I may exhaust myself in efforts to please him in whose hands 
is my life. But alas ! it is all in vain. These methods will 
stand me in stead no longer. They do not heal the hurt. 
They do not mend the matter. Eather, as regards a really 
good understanding, things grow worse an \ worse. The 
more I seek, to stand right with my Eather in heaven, the 
more hopeless does my miserable state of wrong standing 
become. 

(3). But just as all things else are thus felt to be worth- 
less dung, Christ is seen to be gain. Oh ! the relief, the 
joy, of a single glimpse of Christ breaking in upon the dark 
experience of a man desperately trying to be just with God ! 
Oh ! the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus ! Yes ; 
in /bur extremity, all the supports you ever thought you 
could lean on before God giving way, Christ may well be 
counted gain ; Christ the reconciler ; Christ the peacemaker • 
Christ the expiator of guilt ; Christ the justifier of the un- 
godly ; Christ the Son, coming forth from the Father to open 
to you the Father's heart, that you may know and believe 
the love wherewith the Father loveth you ! This is the 
Christ who now comes instead of all that you ever reckoned 
gain, all that you ever thought might warrant confidence 
before God. And how infinitely surpassing, in that view, is 
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ ! It is indeed, you 
now cry, an excellent thing to know Christ ; Christ is worth 
the knowing, worth the winning. Is he not a Christ who, 



208 CHRIST THE ONLY GAIN. 

if I win him, will thoroughly meet my case 1 Having him, I 
must be complete. For I see in him sin, all sin, freely 
pardoned, without price or penance of mine ; myself a sinner, 
of sinners the chief, no longer under condemnation, but ac- 
quitted, justified, accepted ; the prison garb of my guilt 
exchanged for the fairest robe child ever wore. I see an 
instant end of the weary attempt to amend the old position, 
and instead of that the way wonderfully opened for the im- 
mediate occupying of a new one. I see free grace, perfect 
righteousness, a holy salvation, life, love, liberty, all in 
Christ. All else is loss ; Christ alone, Christ is counted 
gain. 

2. Christ is coveted and sought as gain. You not merely 
count Christ as gain, but covet and seek him as gain. But 
are not these two things the same 1 Or does not the one 
include the other % What I count or reckon to be gain, how 
can I but covet and desire and seek % Nay, the heart is 
deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked : who can 
know it % The question must be faithfully pressed home. 
Are you really so thoroughly in earnest in this matter as not 
merely to perceive that Christ is gain, but to be honestly 
willing to possess this gain ] Nor is it merely to the careless 
and unconverted that the question applies, but even perhaps 
still more to not a few of those who are awakened and con- 
vinced. 

In dealing with a case of genuine spiritual distress, when 
the conscience has been deeply moved, the understanding 
enlightened, the whole inner man agitated. I meet with a 
sort of unconquerable repugnance to the acceptance of the 
gospel, an obstinate refusing to be comforted, which fairly 
baffles and greatly perplexes me. The sufferer, I cannot for 
a moment doubt, is sincere. He sincerely owns guilt. He 
sincerely renounces all confidence in the flesh. He sincerely 
believes that salvation is, and can be, only of grace, through 



CHRIST THE ONLY GAIN. 209 

faith, in Christ. Intelligently and devoutly, with, full con- 
sent, he responds to all I say when I tell him of the worth- 
lessness of all creature righteousness, and tell him also of the 
worthiness of the Lamb that was slain. But alas ! he com- 
plains it is to him like the cup of Tantalus, ever near to his 
burning lips, and yet ever escaping his grasp. It is in vain 
that I represent to him, however affectionately, the entire 
and absolute freeness of the gospel offer, the ample warrant 
he has for taking Christ and taking comfort in Christ, the 
infallible certainty and wide sweep of that gracious promise, 
" Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out." 
Thou art perishing, I cry ; thou art lost. But once win 
Christ, and all is well. I see it, I feel it : he answers ; but, 
woe is me ! I cannot. 

Weary of expostulation, argument, entreaty, — sick of the 
task of meeting in detail the endless difficulties and objec- 
tions he conjures up, I turn upon him with the abrupt 
question, Are you willing to have this Christ 1 Honestly, do 
you desire him 1 For may not this depression really cover 
either an indolent and dilettante sort of spiritualism, treating 
the most solemn realities of eternity as if they were merely 
sentimental miseries ; or a morbid fondness for being melan- 
choly, and being sympathised with as melancholy ; or a 
secret reluctance manfully to face and grapple with some 
sacrifice of self-esteem or self-indulgence felt to be inevitable 
if Christ is to be won 1 Ah ! it will not do to be for ever 
treating unbelief, even when it takes the guise of most 
earnest spiritual soul-exercise and soul concern, as a mis- 
fortune, a calamity; to be sympathising with it, and almost 
apologising for it. I cannot give you credit for counting 
Christ gain ; at all events, I cannot give you credit for that 
conviction being very genuine and deep, unless you show 
that you really covet him as gain by being willing and con- 

p 



210 CHEIST THE ONLY GAIN. 

senting to have him. I must remind you that convictions, 
however genuine and deep in the conscience and the under- 
standing, are not saving unless there goes along with them 
the willing heart.. 

This renewing of your will, indeed, is the main part, the 
very essence, of the Spirit's work in your conversion, your 
effectual calling. There may be a sense of sin and a know- 
ledge of Christ. The sense of sin may be so poignant as to 
stir the soul's profoundest fountains of grief, and shame, and 
fear. The knowledge of Christ may be so clear and capti- 
vating as to prompt the feeling — " would he were mine ; were 
he but mine, I would be blessed indeed." But all that, as 
you need to be continually told, is compatible with an un- 
renewed will, with the entire absence of any real and hearty 
willingness to have Christ as your gain. And oh ! remember, 
brethren, that while the convinced conscience craves for 
Christ, and the enlightened understanding sees Christ, it is 
the willing heart that wins him. 

Oh ! make sure, then, of the willing heart, the willing 
mind. Wanting that, you may have much spiritual exercise 
about sin and about Christ all in vain. Having that, even 
though your sense of sin may as yet be very inadequate, and 
your acquaintance with Christ very imperfect, still it is 
enough. Let the stress of your concern as regards your 
spiritual state be all in the direction of the willing mind, the 
willing heart. Lay yourselves out for that. Let the desire 
of your souls be towards Christ. Earnestly seek Christ. 
Think not that he is to be won unsought. Think not that 
he is to come in some mysterious manner into your arms, 
merely because you feel your need of him and see how good 
a thing it would be for you to have him. If he is worth the 
winning, he is worth the seeking. Therefore seek ye the 
Lord. Seek with the earnestness of the merchantman seeking 



CHRIST THE ONLY GAIN. 211 

goodly pearls. Seek with, the importunity of the woman 
who would take no denial. Seek with the perseverance of 
the widow who would give the judge no rest. Seek, and seek 
on till you find. 

Above all, seek with the sincerity of a perfect willingness 
to comply with all the terms on which the finding of Christ 
depends ; a willingness to count all things but loss for Christ ; 
a wilhngness to have no other righteousness but Christ, no 
other strength but Christ, no other life but Christ, no other 
portion but Christ ; a willingness to bear the reproach of 
Christ, to take up the cross of Christ, to fill up in your bodies 
the measure of the suffering of Christ ; a willingness to fall 
in, absolutely and without reserve, with the plan and purpose 
of the Father that the undivided glory of your salvation 
should belong to Christ, that you should be nothing, and 
Christ should be all in all. Seek ye the Lord thus as your 
gain. Covet, desire, seek him, in such a spirit as this. In- 
stead of ever complaining that you cannot get him, instead of 
always condoling with yourselves, and asking all men to con- 
dole with you, because your case, as you choose to imagine, is 
not with sufficient personality and particularity met and pro- 
vided for, be up and doing. Gird up the loins of your minds • 
go out of yourselves in search of Christ. Search for him in 
the word. Search for him in the gospel. Search for him in 
ordinances. Search for him by prayer. Search for him as 
willing, anxious to find him. " Seek ye the Lord while he 
may be found." " I have heard thee in a time accepted, and 
in a day of salvation have I succoured thee." " Behold, now 
is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation." 
" Seek, and ye shall find." 

3. For now Christ is appropriated as gain. " He that 
seeketh findeth." He who seeks Christ, willing, just as he 
is, to have Christ just as lie is, finds him, and in finding Christ, 



212 CHEIST THE ONLY GAIN. 

appropriates him, and in appropriating Christ, feels him to be 
gain. It is for this, and nothing short of this, that you are 
asked to count all things but loss that you may thus win 
Christ. It would be a poor gospel that called you to re- 
renounce all your confidence in the flesh, to let go those 
palpable grounds of trust which might be felt to give you 
some standing before God, and did not also provide for your 
winning Christ in the full sense of your being enabled, not 
merely to count him to be gain, nor merely to covet and seek 
him as gain, but to appropriate him to yourselves as gain, 
actually to win him as your own. 

Yes ; it is that I may win Christ that I am to part with 
everything else. Surely, therefore, if I am not to make a 
foolish bargain, an unprofitable exchange, Christ may be won. 

Do you ask how 1 I reply, by faith, by faith alone ; faith 
making Christ mine, as thoroughly, personally, consciously 
mine, as those other things were mine. These things were 
at all events really in my possession, actually mine. As to 
my being "circumcised on the eighth day, of the stock of 
Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; 
as touching the law, a Pharisee " (ver. 5) ; as to all these 
qualifications there could be no room for doubting that they 
really belonged to me. There could be no question as to their 
being mine. But now I am to discard them all. And for 
what 1 for whom 1 For Christ. But not surely for the 
mere knowledge of Christ, however excellent ; not for the 
mere sense of my need of Christ ; not for a continual seeking 
of Christ. jN"o ; but for Christ himself ; for Christ found, 
attained, appropriated as mine ; that I may win Christ. 

Ah ! if Christ were not thus to be won, it were better for 
me to keep by those old, original grounds of confidence, which 
at least have this recommendation, that they can be sensibly 
apprehended, estimated, weighed, and measured. The good 



CHRIST THE ONLY GAIN". 213 

upon rue, in me, about me, in which I used to trust, is mine ; 
undeniably mine. I can recognise, touch, and handle it as 
mine. And if I am to let it all go for the sake of another 
good, the good that is in Christ, the good that Christ is, 
on the mere chance of that good being some time and some 
way, I know not when or how, mine ; I commit myself to a 
most intolerable experience of suspense and hazard. I am 
willing to let all go. I do in fact let all go. But it is that 
I may win Christ ; that I may really get hold of him ; that I 
may have him as mine. 

But how ? you ask again. Again I answer, by faith ; by 
faith alone. The thing cannot be made plainer to you by 
definition or description. If there be any remaining diffi- 
culty, it must be removed by experiment. " Seek, and ye 
shall find." Seek and win Christ. Believe and be saved. 
Believe and live. 

Nay, but still you ask, how shall I know that I have 
appropriated, or am appropriating, Christ 1 How shall I know 
that I have won, or that I am winning, Christ as mine 1 That, 
I rejoin, is not now the question. I am not speaking of that 
reflex assurance of faith which concludes, on credible evi- 
dence, that my belief is genuine, and that therefore Christ is 
mine. I speak of the direct, immediate, simple, and straight- 
forward acting of faith ; faith dealing not with itself but with 
its object ; dealing with Christ ; with Christ offered in the 
gospel ; with Christ freely given by the Father ; Christ com- 
mended by the Spirit ; Christ owned by your own conscience ; 
Christ welcomed into your very heart. Oh ! be sure you 
have not far to seek. You have not long to wait. 

This Christ whom you now reckon to be the only gain ; 
this Christ whom you now really covet and would fain grasp 
as all your gain ; this Christ is yours ; yours freely, imme- 
diately ; yours now for the taking. You win Christ. It is 



214 CHRIST THE ONLY GAIN. 

his own wish. ; it is his Father's good pleasure ; it is the aim 
of his Spirit's coming that you should win him. " Be not 
faithless, therefore, but believing." Raise not questions. 
Ask not for signs. Say not that if you saw and felt the scars 
you would believe. Lift up the eye of faith. Behold and 
see. Before you, in immediate contact with you, face to face, 
is the crucified one. " Take me," he cries ; " my birth, my 
circumcision, my baptism, my obedience, my sufferings, my 
death, my resurrection, my life, my grace, my glory ; — my- 
self. Take me as an equivalent, far more than an equiva- 
lent, for all that you ever thought you might lean on or trust 
in before God. Come, doubter, see and feel my wounds ; 
wounds borne for such as thou art, for thee thyself, thy very 
self." Wilt thou not fall down before him, absolutely unable 
to hold out any longer against such love 1 "Wilt thou not say 
unto him, " My Lord, and my God ! " 

4. You win Christ so as to enjoy him as gain. You win 
him ; not as the miser hoards his wealth, to keep it ; not as 
the spendthrift gets his property, to waste it. Christ is gain 
to you, not for show and semblance, for name and reputation 
merely. He is yours for profitable use ; for peace, content- 
ment, honour, happiness, and whatever else is comprehended 
in your standing right with God. Be well assured that 
nothing short of your thus winning Christ, in the full sense 
of your not merely appropriating him as gain, but using and 
enjoying him as gain, will reconcile you to the sacrifice you 
have to make of your self-reliance and self-esteem, or enable 
you fully and finally to make it. But what a rich compen- 
sation for all you have to give up is your thus winning 
Christ, so winning him as to have, to use, to enjoy him ! 

To win Christ ! What a prize is this ! It is to win a 
friend, a brother ; a friend who lays down his life for me ; 
a brother who shares with me all the love with which his 



chkist the only gain. 215 

Father loveth him, and all the glory which his Father giveth 
him. To win Christ ! It is to win an inexhaustible fulness 
of grace and truth ; a fountain of atoning blood ever freshly 
flowing ; an unction of the Holy Ghost, shedding light on all 
things, breathing love into all things. Oh ! it is a great word 
this : it is a great thing to win Christ, to get him, to use him, 
to enjoy him, as really gain to me. 

That I may win Christ ! Brethren beloved, it is a real 
attainment ; it is a positive gain. It is not a bare negation ; a 
painful exercise of self-denial ; the enforced renunciation of 
self -righteousness ; the mere emptying myself, or suffering 
myself to be beggared of all I used to lean on and look to and 
trust in. That is not Christianity : it is not the doctrine of 
Christ or the experience of the Christian. The gospel calls 
me not to famine but to fulness, when it calls me to win 
Christ. I am to feed on Christ. I am to grow 7 up into 
Christ. I am to eat his very flesh and drink his very blood. 
I am to win him, so as to find his flesh to be meat indeed, 
and his blood to be drink indeed. 

Who is he who would persuade me to change my whole 
natural habit of thought, my whole natural course of life, to 
forsake the old refuges, the trees of the garden, to cast off 
the old coverings, the fig-leaves, and to come forth, naked, 
shivering, shuddering, a guilty soul confronting an angry 
God 1 And what has he to give me to replace the confidence 
I have lost 1 Himself. I may win him. He will be to me 
instead of all things else. Take me, he cries, take me as a 
substitute, for whatever you are required to part with. Prove 
me. See if I am not a rich equivalent for all. My righteous- 
ness, the righteousness of the slain Lamb, is better for you 
than any apron of your own devising. I am a better hiding- 
place than the best trees of Eden's garden. In me are hid 
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge ; unsearchable 



216 CHRIST THE ONLY GAIN. 

riches are mine. The Father's favour is mine for you ; the 
Father's love and liberality ; the Father's heavenly inherit- 
ance. I am myself the Father's gift to you. I ask you to 
make no sacrifice, without offering to you ample compensation. 
I call on you to count all things but loss ; but it is that you 
may win me. And is not that enough 1 Yes, Lord, for 
" whom have I in heaven but thee 1 and there is none upon 
earth that I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart 
faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion 
for ever" (Ps. lxxiii. 25, 26). 

II. To be found in Christ is the fitting sequel of winning 
Christ. It is the double fruit, the twofold good, of winning 
Christ. I am found in Christ. 

For defence, I am to be found in Christ ; that I may 
meet every adversary ; that I may silence every answer. 
For that I can do now, far otherwise than I used to do before. 
Once I had nothing better to present than my own righteous- 
ness. With that I tried to quench the fiery darts of the 
adversary ; thinking that I might thrust in some goodness of 
my own to avert the stroke, at whatever point he might 
assail. Now I have always to present on every side an 
impregnable front. I have a righteousness, not my own, but 
wholly divine, to plead in every emergency ; against every 
adversary who would assail or question my standing, I 
have the apostle's challenge ; " it is God that justifieth : 
who is he that condemneth 1 It is Christ that died, yea rather 
that is risen again." " Who shall separate us from the love 
of Christ?" 

But I am to win Christ, so as to be found in him, not 
merely to meet and answer every assault of the accusing 
adversary, but to meet also and obey the high calling of God 
in Christ. For winning Christ, and being found in him, I 



CHRIST THE ONLY GAIN. 217 

would press on. As one with him, I would now know him 
as he is ; I would know more of his mind, and know it with 
more sympathy of my mind with his. I would know more 
of his mind, in his passing through my sufferings, which he 
made his, to his glory, which he makes mine ; through death 
to life. Yes ! If I am found in Christ, it is that I may die 
with him into sin, and live with him unto righteousness, and 
unto God. It is that I may grow in grace, and in the know- 
ledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is that in him I may 
go on to perfection. 

Thus to win Christ and be found in him, how blessed ! 
"To be found in him " — when 1 Now — my brother ! 
most emphatically now. Not an hour, not a moment, to be 
lost ! Now is the accepted time ; now, and only now ! 

When 1 does one ask again 1 when but always, in all cir- 
cumstances, evermore 1 When enemies reproach you, when 
your heart misgives you, when doubts arise within, and dark 
questionings invade your peace ; when difficulties are started, 
which you cannot solve, and the ground seems giving way 
under your feet : oh to be found in Christ then, as little children 
nestling in his bosom, not careful to deal with every foe, or 
with any fear, content to look up into his loving face, and 
say, Thou shalt answer, Lord, for me ! To be found in Christ, 
when hell threatens and all its pains take hold on you ; in 
Christ, who himself descended thither, and spoiled all its 
principalities on his cross : to be found in Christ when 
heaven opens, that you may sit with him in the heavenly 
places ; to be found in Christ when earth vexes, and all on 
earth is felt to be vanity, still able to say, If I have nothing 
else worth living for, to me to live is Christ : to be found in 
Christ, when duty calls, in him who said, " I must be about 
my Father's business :" to be found in Christ, when sin 
besets, in him who said, " Get thee behind me Satan : " to be 



218 CHRIST THE ONLY GAIN. 

found in Christ when sorrow comes, in him who wept at 
Bethany, and as he went on his way to Calvary, could still 
say, " The cup which my Father giveth me, shall I not drink 
it?" to he found in Christ in the hour of death, in him 
who cried, "Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit !" to 
he found in Christ in the day of doom, in him to whom, 
at his own bar, you may lift the living, trusting voice, "Thou 
hast answered, Lord, for me !" 

To be found in Christ ! When 1 does one still ask ? 
When, but through endless ages, in those realms of unfading 
beauty and bliss, where all the family of God, angels and 
men together, are gathered into one in Christ ? Then shall 
ye be found in Christ, associated for ever with all the holy 
ones j found in Christ, sharing his glory and his joy, to the 
praise of God the Father, world without end. Amen. 

And what of you, who in death, on the judgment day, 
throughout eternity, are not found in Christ 1 What is to 
become of you, when, too late, the discovery flashes upon you 
that you have not won Christ, and are not to be found in 
him 1 Where are you to be found ? In whom ? Tying in 
the wicked one, doomed to the everlasting tire prepared for 
the devil and his angels ; none to answer for you then ; 
hell opening its wide jaws to receive you. 

Oh ! ye Christless, Godless men ! Is it not high time 
for you to awake out of sleep 1 You may have some sort of 
goodness, in which you think you may perhaps wrap your- 
selves in the trying hour. You may lean on a name, a 
profession, a creed, a form ; or on some amiable qualities you 
seem to possess, some decent virtues you cultivate, some 
pious deeds you do. But will these be gain to you in the 
day when the secrets of all hearts are revealed, and your 
deep alienation from God, amid them all, is relentlessly laid 
bare 1 What a discovery to make then, that they are loss, 



CHRIST THE ONLY GAIN. 219 

that they are all dung ! to discover that then ; when there 
is no Christ to be won, and all hope of your being found in 
him is gone for ever ! Oh ! rather let the discovery be made 
to you now by the Holy Ghost, and acquiesced in by you, in 
your quickened conscience and broken heart. " Seek ye the 
Lord, while he may be found." 



220 THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 



XIII. 

THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 

" Nevertheless trie foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, 
The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that 
nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." — 2 Timothy 
ii. 19. 

The scene here is one of destruction and desolation. On all 
sides houses are shaken and overturned. The houses are 
individuals or communities professing to believe the gospel. 
The faith of some, of several, of many diversely minded and 
diversely influenced, is overthrown. But amid the storm 
and havoc, the wreck and ruin occasioned by false principles 
issuing in corrupt practice, there is a building which standeth 
sure. It is the foundation of God. It is founded and built 
on the rock, which is God the Son ; and it is founded and 
built thereon by God, the Holy Ghost, according to the pur- 
pose of God the Father. Thus, on a threefold warrant, it is 
entitled to be called the foundation of God ; Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost. Now it may be the church collective of which 
this is said, the church which has the Lord's promise that 
the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. But it may 
also be the individual believer that is intended ; for the col- 
lective church and the individual believer are on the same 
footing. For my present purpose I take the text in this 
latter view, and hold it to be descriptive of the Christian 
man, continuing steadfast and firm in his faith amid many 



THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 221 

surrounding instances of backsliding and apostasy. He is a 
tower, or temple, or building of some sort standing sure ; 
being the foundation of God. And in token of that security 
he is sealed. He is doubly sealed ; sealed on both sides. 
Like a column standing between heaven and earth, sealed 
on either side so that it cannot be moved ; he is sealed 
both heavenwards and earthwards. Heavenward, the seal has 
impressed on him the legend, " The Lord knoweth them that 
are his." Earthward, the writing is "Let every one that 
nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." 

I. " The Lord knoweth them that are his." 

By " the Lord " I understand the Lord Jesus Christ. It 
was an early usage to give him that simple title. " It is the 
Lord," says John to Peter, recognising their common Master 
after his resurrection. " I was in the Spirit on the Lord's 
day ;" the day of the Lord Jesus. He is the Lord. This 
Lord knoweth them that are his. 

What his knowing them means and implies may be best 
perhaps brought out by looking at some of the marks or signs 
by which he may be supposed to know them, the grounds of 
his knowing them as his own. These are of two sorts : 
marks or signs bearing upon his interest or right of property 
in them, the claim which he has upon them ; and marks or 
signs bearing more directly on their interest or right of pro- 
perty in him, the claim which he graciously acknowledges 
them to have upon him. He knows them as his, by his 
ownership of them ; and by their ownership of him. 

The Lord knoweth them that are his by signs or marks 
or tokens bearing on his interest or right of property in them, 
his ownership of them. 

Thus, he knows them as given to him by the Father 
from before all worlds, in the everlasting covenant. To this 



222 THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 

ground of his knowledge of them he frequently refers, with 
deep and earnest feeling. " All that the Father giveth me 
shall come unto me ; and him that cometh unto me I will in 
no wise cast out." So he speaks in the view of prevailing 
unbelief respecting him. Multitudes may reject and despise 
him. But not one of those given to him by the Father will 
refuse to come to him. And not one of those who so come 
to him, being given to him by the Father, will he in any wise 
cast out. The main stress of his intercessory prayer (John 
xvii.) is laid on this consideration, his knowing them that are 
his, as given to them by the Father. " Father, the hour is 
come ; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee : 
as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should 
give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him." " I 
have manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest 
me." " I pray for them which thou hast given me • for 
they are thine. And all mine are thine." " Holy Father, 
keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given 
me." " Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given 
me be with me where I am " (vers. 2, 6, 9-11, 24). 

The Lord knoweth them that are his as redeemed by 
him. " I know my sheep." " I lay down my life for them " 
(John x. 14, 15). This ground of knowledge, especially in 
connection with the former, the Lord brings forward very 
touchingly and tenderly, " My sheep hear my voice, and I 
know them " — know them as the Good Shepherd, giving my 
life for them,—" and they follow me" (vers. 28, 29). By 
his having them, every one of them, in his mind and in his 
heart as he hung on the accursed tree, by his tasting death for 
every one of them, " the Lord knoweth them that are his." 

He knows them that are his, not merely by his 
Father's giving them to him, and his own work for them, but 
by the Spirit's work in them also. So he knows them when 



THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 223 

lie says of the Spirit, " He shall glorify me, for he shall take 
of mine, and show it unto you." Otherwise he knows them 
not, for " if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none 
of his." By their having his Spirit, the Spirit testifying of 
him, the Lord knoweth them that are his. He knows them 
as sealed for his by the Holy Ghost, renewed after his like- 
ness, conformed to his image, receiving the adoption of sons, 
in and with himself, and the spirit of adoption, whereby in 
and with himself they cry, Abba, Father. 

These grounds of knowledge, these proofs and tokens of 
his interest and right of property in them, by which the Lord 
knows his own, are surely of deep import to you. And if, as to 
the first two, you may allege that they lie beyond your observa- 
tion and your consciousness, you cannot say that of the last. 
True, you cannot search the secret counsels of heaven to find 
your name written in the Lamb's book of life among the 
countless number of the elect given to him by the Father 
from before all worlds. True also, you cannot hope or aspire 
to behold the breastplate of the great High Priest at the altar 
of atonement, to ascertain if yo~urs is among the names that 
are written there. But you can welcome into your souls the 
blessed Spirit as he comes to reveal Christ in you, to form 
Christ in you the hope of glory. You may beware of griev- 
ing or vexing him when he becomes an inmate and indweller 
with you. You may stir up the gift that is in you, and make 
full proof of his gracious ministry, when he moves you to 
embrace the Lord Christ as freely given to you in the gospel, 
to be no more faithless, but believing, to grow in grace and 
in the knowledge of him whom he thus delights to glorify. 
So, in the simple and continued exercise of a child-like appro- 
priating faith in Christ, you may more and more thoroughly 
attain, every one of you, to the assurance of his loving you 
and giving himself for you. And recognising in all this 



224 THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 

sovereign electing love, as the only possible explanation 
of what is so marvellous in your eyes, — that such an one as 
you should be saved in such a way, — you reach the fountain- 
head of this whole flood of grace, and repose in the eternal 
purpose of the Father ordaining to glory his only-begotten Son, 
and for that end ordaining you to be conformed to his image, 
that he may be the first-born among many brethren. Well 
therefore may you be exhorted to " give all diligence to make 
your calling and election sure." 

The other class of marks or tokens by which the Lord 
knoweth them that are his, those bearing upon their interest 
or right of property in him, do unquestionably come within 
the range and sphere of your consciousness and experience. 
They are, in fact, in the main, but an expansion, or unfolding, 
of the last of the three former ones, the work of the Spirit 
making you Christ's, and Christ yours, and keeping you ever- 
more in this blessed unity. 

The Lord knoweth them that are his, by the need they 
have of him. " They that be whole need not a physician, 
but they that are sick" (Mark ii. 17). " I am poor and needy ; 
but the Lord thinketh upon me." He knows me by my need 
of him. And not merely generally by my need of him in 
common with all the lost ; but particularly and individually ; 
by my special and personal need of him at every moment of 
my life. He knows me by my own individual case, my own 
individual experience, as needing him. So he knoweth them 
that are his separately ; each one of them apart from all the 
rest ; according to each one's separate need. So he knew the 
helpless cripple at Bethesda, as needing the cure to be brought 
to him, since he could not get to the cure. So he knew the 
woman of Samaria when he spoke to herwhat was so thoroughly 
a word in season ; a word at once awakening her, and probing 



THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 225 

her conscience to the quick, that the living and cleansing 
water might be the more welcome. Each one apart he knows 
by his special need of him, as if it were that need that he 
came specially to meet. 

The Lord knoweth them that are his by the trust they 
put in him. " The Lord is good ; he knoweth them that 
trust in him" (Nahum i. 7). So he knew the Syrophoenician 
woman, who was so importunate with him on behalf of her 
daughter that she would take no denial, and would even plead 
as a dog ; claiming no right to the children's table, but only 
to the crumbs that fell from it. He knew her by the believ- 
ing importunity that would not let him go, but, in spite 
of seeming rejection and reproach, held him fast until he 
blessed her. " woman, great is thy faith ; be it unto thee 
even as thou wilt." So he knew that other woman, who in her 
extremity could but venture to press in among the crowd, 
and get so near as to touch the hem of his garment. By the 
trust she put in him he knew her as his. For when, at 
his call, the woman, fearing and trembling, came and fell 
down before him, and told him all the truth, he said unto 
her, " Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole ; go in 
peace, and be whole of thy plague." 

The Lord knoweth them that are his by the love they 
bear to him. So he knew the woman who was a sinner, and 
who, hearing of his sitting at meat in the Pharisee's house, 
brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet 
behind him, weeping, and washed his feet with her tears, 
wiping them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, 
and anointed them with the ointment. She loveth, is his 
acknowledgment, his testimony. She loveth me much. 
And I may not disown her love. For she loveth me much, 
as receiving, from me and through me and in me, much 
forgiveness. By the love she bears to me, on that account 
and on that ground I know her as one that is mine. 

Q 



226 THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 

The Lord knoweth them that are his by the work they 
do for him. Be that work ever so little ; let it be but the 
giving of a cup of cold water to a disciple in the name of a 
disciple, it shall in no wise lose its reward. He knew thus 
as his own the woman who, in the house of Simon the leper, 
poured on his head ointment of spikenard, very precious, 
when he vindicated her against the murmurs of the gain- 
say ers that stood by : " She hath done what she could. She 
hath wrought a good work on me." In whatever sphere, he 
knows them that are his, as working for him ; as his fellow- 
workers. As the Father hath sent him into the world, even 
so he sendeth them, to witness and to work for him. And 
he says to every one of them, as he said to the Asiatic 
churches, " I know thy works," and by thy works I know 
thee as mine. When thou givest a cup of cold water to a 
disciple in the name of a disciple ; when thou speakest a 
word in season to him that is weary ; when thou visitest the 
fatherless and widows in their affliction ; the Lord knows 
thee as his, as he will acknowledge thee in the day when 
thou shalt hear these blessed words, " Inasmuch as thou 
didst it to the least of these my brethren, thou didst it to 
me." 

The Lord knoweth them that are his by their suffering 
for and with him. He suffers along with them ; for in 
all their affliction he is afflicted. When they go forth 
unto him without the gate, bearing his reproach ; when they 
forsake all and follow him ; when they suffer loss for his 
sake ; when they endure hardships as his good soldiers ; when 
they bear the common ills of life as his burden ; when they 
are well-nigh fainting under the heavy load ; the Lord knows 
them as his. By their tears which he puts into his bottle ; by 
the wounds and scars of their sore strife with evil ; by their 
unutterable groanings, which his Spirit turns into prayers, 
the Lord knoweth them that are his. 



THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 227 

The Lord knoweth them that are his as waiting for 
hirn. He knows them as his own, when in answer to his 
announcement, " Behold I come quickly," he hears them 
murmuring, " Even so come, Lord Jesus." He knows them 
as his own by their loving his appearing and longing to be 
with him. He knows them as his own when he sees them, 
with loins girt and lamps burning, watching for his advent. 
He knows them as his own when, over the grave of freshly 
buried love, they lift the eye of resignation and of hope as 
they hear the gracious words, " Thy brother shall rise again;" 
and when, sorrowing for them that are asleep, they yet believe, 
and are comforted in believing, that " as Jesus died and rose 
again, even so them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring 
with him." 

Now, put together all these marks by which the Lord 
knoweth them that are his ; their being the Father's gift 
to him, the purchase of his own blood, the sharers of his 
holy nature, through the Spirit that dwelt in him dwell- 
ing also in them; their sore need of him, their simple 
faith in him, their earnest love to him, their working 
for him, suffering with him, waiting his return ; and say 
what must his thus knowing them mean 1 what must it imply 
and involve 1 Nay, rather, what will it not include of watch- 
ful care, tender pity, unwearied sympathy, unbounded benefi- 
cence and liberality and bountifulness ? 

The reply had better be left to every man's own heart. 
Only meditate and ponder well these manifold reasons of this 
wondrous knowledge, and seek to enter into them and appre- 
hend them experimentally, with personal application to your- 
selves ; grasp them, appropriate them, as the reasons of his 
knowing you as his own ; and the fulness of the blessing of 
being so known by such an one as he is will more and more 
make itself felt. 

In particular, as regards your steadfastness and persever- 



228 the foundation of god. 

ance, amid the shaking of men's faith, and their falling away 
from the truth, for your safe preservation from backsliding, 
error, and apostasy, he ever cleaving to Christ as thus know- 
ing you ; knowing thee, poor trembling soul, silly, 
simple sheep as thou art ; knowing thee individually ; call- 
ing thee by thy name ; acquainted with all thy ways : and, in 
spite of all thy frailties and all thy fears, still ever owning 
thee as his. He knows thee as his own, to keep thee by his 
mighty power through faith unto salvation. u Whosoever 
toucheth thee toucheth the apple of his eye." He knows 
thee as his own, to make all things work together for thy 
good. He knows thee as his property. "Who can steal or 
force anything from him 1 He knows thee as part of his very 
self, a member of his body, and who can dismember him ? He 
knows thee as thus his own, and can no more deny thee than 
he can deny himself. " Can a woman forget her sucking child, 
that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb 1 
She may forget ; yet will not he forget thee ; he hath graven 
thee on the palms of his hands." Thou art his, and he knows 
thee as his. Is not that enough for thee ? 

The Lord knoweth them that are really his ; not them that 
only appear or profess to be his ; for there are many that say 
to him, " Lord, Lord,'' to whom he will profess, " I never 
knew you : depart from me, ye that work iniquity." But 
those that are truly his, however obscure and despised, the 
Lord knoweth.' The world may not know them ; they may 
scarcely even know themselves ; but the Lord knoweth them, 
though all else disown them. 

II. u Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart 
from iniquity." 

1. Earning the name of Christ comes before departing 
from iniquity. This is the evangelical arrangement. And 
it is the only one that can meet the sinner's case. He may 



THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 229 

not think so naturally. For his idea of departing from ini- 
quity is one that he can realise apart from Christ. It is mere 
outward reformation ; the renouncing of some old customs 
and old companionships ; the adoption of a decent mode of 
life. He may include in his notion a little more. He may 
admit that the change implies some relentings and regrets ; 
some compunctious visitations and feelings ; some pangs of 
remorse. But that is all. And if that were all, there need 
be no reason for placing the naming of the name of Christ 
first. 

But to you who know what departing from iniquity really 
means ; to you who are in earnest about departing from ini- 
quity; to you who appreciate somewhat of the beauty of 
holiness, and who have some sense and experience of the 
power of indwelling sin ; to you who have truly engaged in 
the task of grappling with corruption at its source, in the 
inner man, and aiming to be holy, as God is holy ; to you it 
must surely be good news to be told that your departing from 
iniquity is not in any sense a preliminary to your naming the 
name of Christ. 

ISTo ! Your naming the name of Christ is the first thing. 
Come, then, and name that name as you are ; not as depart- 
ing from iniquity ; but as utterly unable to do more than cry, 
" wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the 
body of this death ?" Come, with iniquity still cleaving to 
you ; come in your helplessness ; come as you are. Do not 
wait till you can say or think that you have less sin to be 
answered for, or are somehow more free from sin's guilt and 
pollution. I give you credit for a desire to depart from all 
iniquity. I assume your earnestness about your personal 
sanctiflcation. I take for granted that you care, not merely 
for forgiveness and safety, but also, arid still more, for holi- 
ness ; that you desire not merely to be let off from punish- 



230 THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 

ment, but to be made pure and loving and Godlike. And I 
regard you as so mucb concerned about that as to find in it 
a difficulty about your instantly closing with the gospel offer, 
and naming the name of Christ. 

You have somehow the idea that you must begin at least 
your departing from iniquity before you venture on the liberty 
of confidently and comfortably naming the name of Christ. 
But read the legend aright. Take in the whole fulness of 
the gospel of Christ. Do not imagine that if you could say 
or feel that you were departing from iniquity, you would have 
more boldness in naming the name of Christ. Do not wait 
for that; it is waiting till the stream run dry. For your 
departing from iniquity must be at the source, the fountain, 
the spring, of the iniquity that is in you. And that is 
your departure from the living God. Your first step, there- 
fore, in departing from iniquity must be a return from 
your departure from the living God. It must be your 
reconciliation to him, your being brought nigh unto him, 
through your naming the name of Christ. Is not this a 
blessed reading of the seal on the earthward, sinward side ; 
the side of the sin -stricken soul 1 

Thou tempest-tossed struggler with the horrid sea of out- 
ward and inward iniquity ; thou who art hesitating and 
hanging back, as if it would be presumption in thee to name 
the name of Christ till thou hadst made some head against 
the stream; come and read this legend. First name the 
name of Christ. Name that name now. Name it, plead it, 
before and in order to your departing from iniquity. Name 
it as you are ; Jesus ; so called because he " saves his people 
from their sins." 

2. Naming the name of Christ is to be followed by 
departing from iniquity : and that not only in the form 
of a natural and necessary consequence to be anticipated, 



THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 231 

but in that of obedience to a peremptory command. It 
is not said, He that nameth the name of Christ may be 
expected, or "will be inclined, or must be moved by a 
divine impulse, to depart from iniquity. But it is ex- 
pressly put, as an authoritative and urgent precept. "Let 
him that nameth the name of Christ depart from ini- 
quity." 

Here also we see the grace of the gospel. It is indeed 
true, that naming the name of Christ, believing on him, 
looking to him, embracing him, does naturally and necessarily 
lead to departing from iniquity ; that the two things are in- 
separable ; that faith in Jesus carries in it the principle of 
perfect purity as well as peace. And it is good to tell the 
anxious soul, the soul anxious, not for safety merely, but 
for holiness, that his naming the name of Christ now, and 
just as he is, will assuredly be his best and only means of 
departing from iniquity. But it may be well to prepare him 
for a possible disappointment ; at least in the first outset of 
his Christian experience. 

Ah ! when I first cast my eye on the cross of Christ, and 
venture to name his name ; when, the Spirit of grace and 
supplication being poured upon me, I look on him whom I 
have pierced, and, trembling, regard him as pierced for me ; 
when I see him bearing my sin, and bearing it all away ; 
when I gaze on his agony, and apprehend my share in its 
cause and in its fruit ; I feel as if I could never any more 
have any taste for the accursed thing which crucified my 
Lord ; as if nothing could ever tempt me to traffic with the 
vice or the vanity of the world which rejected him ; as if 
spontaneously, and by the mere force of the emotions that 
now fill my soul, I must without effort, and without purpose 
almost, be led on in the way of abhorrence of all that is evil, 
and love of all that is holy and good. Alas ! alas ! Too 



232 THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 

soon I find that the old man is too powerful for the new ; 
that it is an upward walk I have to tread ; that I have to 
make head against a strong current, apt to become a sweep- 
ing torrent. Departing from iniquity, in the sense in which 
I now understand and care for that attainment, does not come 
so spontaneously as I had expected, out of naming the name 
of Christ. Growth in holiness is, I begin to find, no play 
or pastime of a summer day. The purifying of the heart 
through faith is no process of mere unconscious pro- 
gress. 

Surely it is a relief and comfort to me, in such circum- 
stances, to know that it never was meant to be so. It is 
good for me to have the process of my personal sanctification 
put upon the footing, not of a corollary or consequence, in the 
nature of things, from my belieYing in Christ for the saving 
of my soul, but of a business with which I have to concern 
myself, as if it were all in my hands ; my life business, in 
short ; that I am not to wait passively and quietly as if the 
work would go on without my co-operation, and almost with- 
out my consciousness ; that, in a word, I have to work out 
my own salvation 

3. ZSTammg the name of Christ and departing from 
iniquity thus go together. They are not really twain, but 
one. There is not first a naming of the name of Christ, as 
if it were an act or a transaction to be completed at once, 
and so disposed of and set aside ; and then thereafter a 
departing from iniquity, as its fitting consequence and com- 
manded sequeL The two things cannot be thus separated. 
For, in truth, naming the name of Christ involves depart- 
ing from iniquity ; and departing from iniquity is possible 
only by naming the name of Christ. The one cannot be 
without the other. In the very first instant of your naming 
the name of Christ there is departing from iniquity. And 



THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 233 

ever afterwards your continued departing from iniquity is 
simply a continued naming of the name of Christ. The 
connection is close and indissoluble ; every earnest and grow- 
ing Christian feels it to be so. 

Call to mind the past ; your first naming the name of 
Christ with anything like realising and appropriating faith, — 
your first looking to him and embracing him as not only the 
Saviour of sinners, but your own Saviour, loving you and 
giving himself for you. Was there not, then, in that simple 
act or exercise of faith, a departing from iniquity 1 ? You 
turned your back on sin when you turned your face to the 
cross. Or rather, you turned your face to sin as seen in the 
cross ; and as it crucified Christ, it crucified you : so that, 
in your very naming the name of Christ at first, there was a 
departing from iniquity. 

And consider the present. What is your experience now 
if you are really in earnest in the work of your personal and 
progressive sanctification 1 How do you deal with any sin 
besetting you 1 ? How, and how only, can you deal with it 
hopefully and successfully % Is it by grappling with it 
directly % Is it by meeting it face to face in a hand-to-hand 
encounter % Is it not rather always by naming the name of 
Christ % by looking to him, as at the first 1 looking to him as 
bearing that very sin 1 looking to him as, in the bearing of 
that sin, loving you and giving himself for you ? 

Did not Paul experimentally prove this to be the rule 
and law of his deliverance from evil, and his consequent 
progress in holiness, when, under the sore, sad pressure of 
indwelling corruption, he said first, " wretched man that I 
am 1 who shall deliver me from the body of this death'?" 
and then, " I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
With him there was no departing from iniquity excepting 
only in the naming of the name of Christ. It was always 



234 THE FOUNDATION OF GOD. 

with him a naming of that name. So let it be with you. 
Let it be as naming the name of Christ that you seek to 
depart from iniquity. Deal not so much with the iniquity 
from which you would depart, rather look upon it as dealt 
with and disposed of by Christ. Deal with Christ. Name 
his name. Cleave to him. Abide in him. So shall your 
holiness be not a negative but a positive attainment, and 
your departing from iniquity real and sure when thus it is 
an earnest naming of the name of Christ. 



STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 235 



XIV. 
STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 

" These . . . confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the 
earth." — Hebeews xi. 13. 

This is a confession which all the patriarchs made ; if not in 
words, more emphatically in deeds. We find it expressly 
made on five occasions in the Old Testament. The five, 
however, may be classified under two heads. 

Under the first head there are two ; historical, and as it 
were, doctrinal. 1. Abraham uses this language, in conferring 
with the sons of Heth about the burial of Sarah, " I am a 
stranger and a sojourner with you ; give me a possession of a 
burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my 
sight" (Gen. xxiii. 4). 2. The Lord himself uses it in speak- 
ing of the tenure in which Israel held the land of promise, 
" The land shall not be sold for ever ; for the land is mine ; 
for ye are strangers and sojourners with me" (Lev. xxv. 
23). 

Under the second head there are three instances, more 
devotional and practical. David uses the expression ; 1. As 
bearing on liberal giving to the Lord, — "Who am I, and 
what is my people, that we should be able to offer so will- 
ingly after this sort 1 For all things come of thee ; and of 
thine own have we given thee : for we are strangers before 
thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers. Our days on 
earth are as a shadow, and there is no abiding" (1 Chron. 
xxix. 14, 15) ; 2. As bearing on the tears which a sense of 



236 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 

the world's vanity and sin causes to flow, " Hear my prayer, 
Lord, and give ear unto my cry. Hold not thy peace at 
my tears. For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, 
as all my fathers were" (Ps. xxxix. 12); 3. As bearing on 
spiritual longing for the knowledge of God and his command- 
ments, " I am a stranger in the earth. Hide not thy com- 
mandments from me" (Ps. cxix. 19). 

I. The first two instances of this confession occur in his- 
torical narratives, and may be considered by themselves. 

1. Abraham says to the sons of Heth : "I am a 
stranger and a sojourner with you ; give me a posses- 
sion of a burying-place with you, that I may bury my 
dead out of my sight" (Gen. xxiii. 4). I do not dwell upon 
this most interesting and pathetic picture. The bereaved old 
man coming out from his lonely chamber, to face, as he 
expects, an unsympathising group of strangers ; the sudden 
surprise of finding them to be kind and pitying friends ; the 
grand and stately interchange of compliments ; the generous 
offer ; the courteous declinature ; the grace of the final treaty 
of love, rather than of business ; all so original in its character, 
and so deeply natural too ; might tempt one to enlarge. I 
rather proceed, however, at once to make some practical use 
of the appeal, " I am a stranger and a sojourner with you." 

You are alone, and would fain be let alone, in your 
grief. You care not for companionship ; you shrink from it. 
" Leave me to myself," may be your instinctive cry. " Only 
give me liberty in quietness to bury my dead. Earth may 
have many things attractive to you : for me, it can furnish only 
one thing I care for ; a grave for my dead." This may be a 
morbid frame ; and it may have a fascination for the mourner ; 
and such a fascination as is apt to grow. It may become the 
luxury of woe ; and, like all luxury, it will enervate and 
enslave. It is to be resisted in its beginning. For it has 



STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 237 

no truth in it, no charity, no faith. Are you to bid all the 
world stand still, or stand aside, that you may bury your dead 1 
Thronged as it is with men and women, as sensitive as you 
can be to all its pains ; and having tenfold more of its pains 
to bear, is it a world from which you may seclude yourself 
as if in the shelter of some solitary cell, to muse and mourn 
alone ? No, brother ! whatever may be your grief ; say not in 
any such spirit to your fellows, I am a stranger. Learn a 
better lesson. You may feel, when the desire of your eyes is 
taken away, as if you had nothing left on earth to live for, 
save only the burying of your dead. But it is not so. As a 
lover of men, you have much to live for ; to do good as you 
have opportunity. As a lover of Christ, you have more ; for 
to you to live is Christ. 

In this spirit, you may well and warrantably use the 
language of the Patriarch ; with fullest fellowship and 
sympathy, "Have pity upon me, my friends!" "You 
may have been wont to regard me simply as a stranger; 
separated from you ; moving in a different sphere, and follow- 
ing different ways. You may have seen perhaps, with some 
not unnatural grudge, my prosperous state ; thinking it hard 
that such an uninvited intruder into your country should 
possess such wealth in flocks and herds : or the simple wor- 
ship of my household may have provoked your indignation 
or contempt. I was not one of you. You saw me as a 
stranger ; as one whom you did not understand, and could 
not altogether like. But see me now, a stricken mourner, 
a desolate old man, fain to come to you and ask from you a 
grave in which to bury my dead." There is that in sorrow 
which makes men kind ; which makes them kin. How 
precious, in this view, may a season of distress be to one 
labouring among his neighbours on behalf of Christ ! You 
hear of distress in some home within your beat ; a sick child, 
a dying spouse, a mourning Eachel, a weeping Mary, an old 



238 STE ANGERS AND PILGEDIS. 

man seeking a grave for his dead. You hasten your visit 
now ; praying for and looking for a door of entrance, through 
softened broken hearts ; hearts shut closely hitherto. Or, 
you have yourself been called to mourn and weep. You go 
your customary rounds, with furrows in your cheeks, and 
traces of tears in your eye ; telling, too sadly, of your caring 
for nothing but a grave to bury your dead. Your very 
grief wins for you a kindly response. Your faltering voice 
goes home as never loudest warning did before. These 
sympathisers feel that you are as they are. They will listen 
to you when you speak of something else than the burying of 
your dead j and something better for them. "What is it to be 1 
"I am a stranger and a sojourner with you." So says 
the bereaved old man. "I am content to be so. I can 
wander up and down without a resting-place. The dead 
alone need a resting-place. Give me a grave for my dead. 
And you, whose guest I am, with whom as a stranger I am, 
and a sojourner, who seem to hold the country by a surer 
tenure than mine, — wherein are you better than I ? I need 
but a grave to bury my dead ! And what, after all, is your 
need 1 Death enters your palace, as it enters my hut. What 
is there then between us ] What can either of us speak 
about or think about, but only the grave in which we are to 
bury our dead? Surely this makes us one. I may be 
apparently more of a stranger on the earth than you ; my 
possessions less secure than yours ; my fragile remnant of 
life more like a pilgrimage than your robust health. But, 
brother, when you and I come to talk together of a place to 
bury our dead, we are strangers to one another no more ; we 
are sojourners with one another no more. We are strangers 
and sojourners alike in a land that is not ours, but the .Lord's. 
And we look for a better country, where we may be all at 
home together with the Lord. Together, therefore, let us 
leave the earth to our buried dead. And for what remains 



STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 239 

of our wandering here, let us together set our faces to seek a 
heritage where none of us shall be strangers or sojourners 
any more ; where the risen dead and the living changed 
shall be for ever with the Lord, in his everlasting kingdom 
and glory." 

2. The Lord says to Israel "The land is mine; for 
ye are strangers and sojourners with me" (Lev. xxv. 23). 
This may be regarded almost as a kind of rejoinder to 
the pathetic appeal which we have heard Abraham making 
to the sons of Heth. The land is here represented as 
having already passed into the hands of Israel; as being 
in fact already as good as conquered. Abraham, in his 
natural seed or posterity, is now occupying its borders. 
Imagine, in that view, the words to be spoken to him 
personally. " Thou art here again, after a long interval, 
in the land where thou wast once a wanderer ; but now a 
wanderer no more ; a settled owner and proprietor ; lord of 
all the soil ; monarch of all thou canst survey. Then thou 
wast a stranger in it ; now thou art at home. Is it really 
so 1 Art thou not a stranger still ? Then thou wast a 
stranger and sojourner with the sons of Heth. Now thou 
art a stranger and sojourner with me. Then thou didst 
acknowledge them to be thy hosts, and thyself to be their 
guest. Now thou art to feel that I am thy host, and thou 
art my guest. For the land is mine. Thou sojournest 
with me." 

There is comfort in this thought applied retrospectively. 
Thou didst indeed then succeed in purchasing a few feet of 
ground, that thou mightest bury thy dead in no borrowed 
tomb, but in a sepulchre thou hadst by purchase made thine 
own. But, after all, it was in a land possessed by alien tribes, 
a land of strangers. Is it not a satisfaction, a solace, to 
reflect now that it was in a land which is the Lord's ? This 
comfort may be yours, believer. You too bury your dead in 



240 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 

a land that is the Lord's. And the land is the wide earth ; 
for the earth is the Lord's. "Whenever you have to bury 
your dead, it is in a land of which the Lord says, It is mine. 
To leave loved remains on a foreign strand, slowly and sadly 
to lay down the brave where the foe is sullenly firing ; to lose 
the weary adventurer in the wild jungle, abandoned to his 
fate among its beasts of prey ; to cast with measured plunge 
into the deep sea the cold form which you prize above all 
its treasures : ah ! what a hard sore trial of love and faith. 
But courage. " The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness there- 
of !" The fulness thereof! It is filled with many things 
rich and rare. Among the rest it is filled with your buried 
dead. "The land is mine." The earth is mine, and its fulness ; 
the fulness of all the precious dust of all my saints ; their 
bodies so dear to me that I must needs see to their being 
kept in a land which is my own ; until I come to bring them 
from their resting-places, clothed with life and glory and 
beauty immortal, to carry them with me to a better, a 
heavenly home. 

There is admonition also in the thought. " The land is 
mine ;" the land in which you have left your buried dead ! 
Yes ; the land is his. You are sojourners in it with him. 
He lodges and entertains you. And he does so in so liberal 
a spirit, and on so bountiful a scale, that you need to be con- 
tinually reminded of his proprietorship and your dependence ; 
and to hear him saying The land is mine. 

If you were hospitably received in some great and good 
man's house, seated at his table, and allowed the full range 
of his wide domains, you would not think of taking liberties as 
if all were your own. You would not injure his goodly 
furniture, or waste his costly viands. You would not lounge 
too familiarly in his ample halls, or partake to excess of the 
luxuries of his table. You would be on your guard, lest you 
should abuse his hospitality. You would beware of encroach- 



STKANGEKS AND PILGEIMS. -241 

ing on his condescension. And you would pay him the 
decent compliment of showing how much you valued him 
and his company above all his goodly fare. Then again 
you would be careful not to set your heart too much upon 
your temporary residence, and its temporary entertainment. 
You would moderate your taste for the enjoyments and in- 
dulgences which are yours only for a brief and uncertain 
time ; allowed to you by him whose guest you are. And 
you would not think of giving away to foolish friends the 
goods stored up in his cellars ; or cutting down the timber of 
his woods for your own pleasure or aggrandisement. 

This figure or parable may explain and enforce the right 
and safe way of using this world without abusing it. Let 
it be used under the constant pressure of the apostle's warn- 
ing that the fashion of this world passes away, and also with 
a continual, realising sense of the Lord's appeal : " The world, 
the land, is mine ; for ye are strangers and sojourners with 
me." Let that view of your position be thoroughly appre- 
hended. It will at once determine the attitude you are to 
assume in the world. 

As the Lord's guests you cannot be indifferent or stand 
neutral in the great strife that is going on in the land of 
which he says, It is mine. You must take a side. JSTor 
can there be room for doubt what the side is to be. The 
buried bones of your pious dead, whose graves are all over 
the field of battle, forbid all hesitancy or indecision, all 
cowardice or compromise. The earth is indeed the Lord's. 
And it is ere long to be triumphantly vindicated and glori- 
ously occupied as his. But meanwhile it is the Lord's, as a 
kind- of debateable territory, every inch of which has to be 
fought for, to be won and kept as it were, by force of arms ; 
like the parcel of ground which, Jacob bought, but which, 
nevertheless, his sons had to conquer by their swords and 
their bows. And it has in its bosom a countless multitude 



242 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 

of redeemed bodies, belonging to redeemed souls ; bodies 
now vile perhaps, but destined to be conformed to the Lord's 
own glorious body. You cannot be idle while the battle is 
raging that is to end in such a victory. 

Two things in particular you must have much at heart. 
The first is to break every tie that ever bound you, or could 
bind you, to the usurper's service ; the service of the prince 
of this world. As sojourners with the rightful owner and 
Lord, you can have no dealings with him who rules only 
by force and by fraud. You need have none, for his power 
is broken and his lie exposed. He has nothing in you, 
either as an accuser or as a tyrant. You are not at his 
mercy, as if, being guilty, you needed to propitiate him. 
Your guilt is purged. There is now to you no condemnation ; 
to you who are in Christ, who answers for you in the judgment. 
You cannot now be brought under Satan's bondage ; for 
greater is he that is for you than all they that can be against 
you. You cannot now be blindfolded by the great deceiver. 
You know the truth, and the truth makes you free. Surely 
now you will not betray your host with whom you dwell, by 
shrinking from knowing his name and defending his cause, 
or by keeping up a treacherous correspondence with the 
enemy. 

Eather, secondly, knowing his mind and heart, seeing how 
intensely he longs to clasp to his bosom, and welcome into 
his home, and entertain as his guests, each and all of those 
fighting in the rebel host, will you not be ever appealing to 
every one of them whom you meet with, every stranger wan- 
dering afar off, every unwary youth enlisting himself as a 
recruit? "Will you not affectionately plead and remon- 
strate 1 Will you not reason with them thus 1 — " War to 
the knife there must be between him who says, 'The land 
is mine,' and the usurping prince ; a war, in the end, of utter 
extermination. The rebel cities are doomed to be destroyed, 



STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 243 

and all who are found in them must perish. As strangers 
and sojourners with God, we cannot but be loyal to him, and 
sympathising with him in his righteous purpose of avenging 
judgment ; but in faithfulness and love to him and to you, 
we beseech, you, in his name and on his behalf, not finally 
to commit yourselves. Come ye weary and heavy laden. Make 
trial of the hospitality we have by experience found to be 
so safe and so blessed. We were once as you are now ; 
enemies to him with whom now we are sojourners. There 
was room enough, in the inn for us. There is room enough, 
for you. There was no one with whom the Son could be a 
sojourner when he was here. There was no room in the inn 
for hiru. He had not where to lay bis head. But he him- 
self tells us now that there is room, — he has made room, — 
in the inn for all of us. There is room for all of us in the 
tent pitched for our temporary shelter on the earth now ; 
room for all of us in the abiding dwelling-place awaiting us 
in heaven hereafter ; room for all of us in the heart and 
borne of the everlasting Father." 

II. The three other instances of this confession of the 
text occur in devotional exercises, and they may be made to 
fit into one another. 

1. "We are strangers before thee and sojourners, as were 
all our fathers" (1 Chron. xxix. 15). 

Here the thought "we are strangers before thee and 
sojourners," is brought in to heighten and entrance the ad- 
miring and grateful joy with which David contemplates the 
amazing goodness of God, in permitting him and his people 
to do so much, to do anything, for the building of his house, 
for the glory of his name. What grace, what condescension, 
is there in this ! The proprietor and Lord of all things 
enables and inclines us who are his guests, sojourning with 
bim in the land that is his own, to offer as our gift what 



244 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 

already, as his property, "belongs to him alone ; and most 
generously consents to accept the offering ! It is as if, while 
entertained by an open-hearted and open-handed landlord, 
owner of large domains, I were to take it into my fond and 
foolish conceit to approach him with some of the dainties of 
his own sumptuous board, or the ornamental furniture of his 
own splendid apartment, or the varied produce of his own 
garden and cultured grounds, gravely begging him to 
receive at my hands what I bring as an acknowledgment on 
my part of his bountiful hospitality. How preposterous a 
procedure ! one would be apt to say, and how utterly un- 
reasonable, in such a case, to take credit to myself, or imagine 
that I am profiting or obliging him ! Does he not oblige 
me, and that most signally, when he entertains me in such a 
manner as to make a transaction of that sort possible, without 
its provoking indignation for its presumption, or ridicule for 
its folly 1 For, in order to any such procedure, I must be a 
sojourner with my host, on a very peculiar footing, and after 
a very peculiar fashion. And so we are, as sojourners with 
the Lord. " The heaven, even the heavens are the Lord's, 
but the earth hath he given to the children of men " (Ps. 
cxv. 16). The land is his, and we are sojourners with 
him in it. But he so gives it to us, as to make us to feel 
that we have a right to regard it and use it freely as 
ours. 

Living without God in the world, we are intruders, with- 
out any valid title to be where we are or to enjoy what we 
enjoy. Our place and our portion should be elsewhere. We 
are here by sufferance merely, tolerated by the Lord -in the 
exercise of long-suffering for a season ; but not really wel- 
come, acceptable, cherished guests and sojourners with him ; 
any more than were the Amorites of old, whom the land 
vomited out in the fulness of their iniquity. But believing, 
and becoming the true people and children of the Lord, we 



STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 245 

have the earth given us to possess by another and better 
tenure. We receive a gracious covenant-right to the use and 
occupancy of it. All things, the world included, are ours, 
for we are Christ's, and Christ is God's. He places all earth's 
resources at our disposal, and makes them all ours ; so that 
now we are indeed in a position to " offer to him willingly 
and in the uprightness of our heart" (ver. 17), while yet we 
give him always all the praise. " Lord, our God, all this 
store that we have prepared to build thee an house for thy 
holy name cometh of thine hand, and is all thine own" 
(ver. 16). "Of thine own have we given thee; for we are 
strangers before thee and sojourners, as were all our fathers. 
Our days on the earth are as a shadow." 

2. " Hear my prayer, Lord, and give ear unto my 
cry ; hold not thy peace at my tears : for I am a stranger 
with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were" (Ps. 
xxxix. 12). 

This is your sad cry as you suffer under the inevitable 
evils of a stranger's lot, even though you may have the bless- 
edness, in the land in which you are strangers, of being 
sojourners with him whose land it is. For, however hospit- 
ably he with whom you are sojourning may entertain you, 
it is still, as it were, within the precincts of an inn, nor 
can you expect to escape the vexations and troubles in- 
separable from that mode of accommodation. Then you 
must remember that the land, in which as strangers you 
are for the present entertained as sojourners, is the earth 
which has been cursed for your sin, and on which, with 
whatever mitigation, the sentence still lies. You may think 
it strange, perhaps hard, that you should be thus lodged, 
even temporarily; in the midst of creation's groans, ming- 
ling with your own. But, for wise ends, your gracious enter- 
tainer considers this to be right. And may you not always 
be appealing to him, and reminding him of your relation to 



246 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 

liini % "I am thy guest ; a stranger sojourning with thee. I 
am a stranger ; a stranger here in the land, upon the earth, 
which has little tolerance for strangers. And I must keep 
myself a stranger ; a stranger from its works and ways ; more 
and more a stranger the more I grow in thy grace and in thy 
knowledge. Thou hast been thyself a stranger here. Thou 
hast experienced a stranger's treatment, a stranger's trials. 
Thou hast had personal and painful acquaintance with all 
that the world can do to those who will not be conformed to 
its fashion ; with all the void its vanity can cause ; and all 
the bitter grief its guilt can bring. Thou hast consented 
to be made sin, and made a curse, for such as I am, in the 
world. Now thou livest and reignest, head over all things 
for thy church. The land, the earth, is thine. And I 
am a sojourner with thee in it. My fathers were so ; and 
thou didst deliver them. Thou wilt not reject my prayer. 
Thou wilt not hold thy peace at my tears. Thou wilt spare 
me to recover strength." 

3. " I am a stranger in the earth ; hide not thy com- 
mandments from me" (Ps. cxix. 19). 

The point and pith of this prayer would seem to lie in the 
continual need which one who is a stranger on the earth has 
of communion with him whose guest he is ; with whom, as 
a stranger, he is a sojourner. In that character, as a stranger 
on the earth, I do not now desire to have more fellowship 
with the people of the land than is necessary for pious ends ; 
for the comely burial of my dead, or for the discharge of my 
duty of love to the living. I would rather converse with 
him who says, "The land is mine." And the medium of 
conversation with him is his word, or his commandments. 
His commandments ; his communications of whatever sort ; 
precepts, promises, histories, prophecies, warnings, encourage- 
ments ; all sayings of his, for they are all commandments ; 
I desire to use as means of real personal converse with him. 



STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 247 

But I cannot do so unless he opens my eyes. Therefore, I 
pray, " Hide not thy commandments from me." 

This prayer may fitly close the present discourse. It 
is suitable and relevant to all the views I have been ask- 
ing you to take of your position and calling as strangers in 
the land, and sojourners in it with him who says, " The land 
is mine." 

Are you summoned to the sad task of burying your 
dead ; mourning beside the freshly opened grave ; or 
dealing with tender memories of the past 1 ? Let not your 
relenting tenderness of feeling evaporate in vacant sighs, or 
passive melancholy, or soft, sentimental musings. Seek 
rather to turn it to wise practical account, that by the sad- 
ness of the countenance the heart may be made better. In- 
stead of indulging vaguely in the luxury of woe, let your 
thoughts and feelings take some definite shape, and come to 
some precise point. For that end, use intelligently and de- 
voutly the holy book. Let the word of God become the 
interpreter of his providence ; suggesting the salutary hints, 
teaching the useful lessons, which the occasion is designed 
to impart. And ask the Lord's help in this, according to the 
prayer — " Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous 
things out of thy law. I am a stranger in the earth ; hide 
not thy commandments from me." 

Are you experiencing some new and fresh instance of 
the Lord's bountiful manner of entertaining you 1 Is he 
refreshing you in body and in soul ; furnishing your table 
with more than ordinary dainties ; anointing your head with 
the oil of unusual gladness ; causing your cup very copiously 
to - run over 1 Then, very specially, you need divine grace 
and guidance ; and you do well to consult and converse with 
the Lord, that you may not abuse his hospitality, or find the 
full cup he puts into your hand too difficult to carry. Wait 



248 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 

therefore upon him in the study of his word, that you may 
learn how to use his gifts. Turn from the gifts to the Giver. 
Let him teach you how to walk with him still as strangers, 
and not make this world your home. " Lord, hide not thy 
commandments from me." 

Are you moved to offer willingly to the Lord your- 
selves, your substance, your time, your talents, your energy 
and zeal 1 Are you anxious to be of service, to do good, to 
build his house, to advance his cause, to consider the poor 
as being his ? You cannot trust yourselves, your own wisdom, 
or your own goodness. You are apt to err in devising ways 
and means of usefulness ; or to grow weary in well-doing ; or 
to become self-complacent and self-righteous, and therefore 
also careless and haughty. Be sure that you take the Lord 
along with you in all your plans and all your activities j in 
every visit you pay to the widow and the fatherless, and 
every mite you cast into any treasury. Seek counsel of God. 
Let him direct you. " Lord, I am a stranger in the earth." 
I have but a stranger's knowledge of what it needs, and of 
what is thy design or purpose at any given time or place 
regarding it. With the best intentions, I make mistakes and 
go wrong. And I am myself of the earth, earthy. Do thou 
direct me. Do thou teach me. " Hide not thy command- 
ments from me." 

Finally, are you depressed under a heavy sense of the 
general vanity and vexation and weariness of all things in 
the world 1 Does it seem as if all were barrenness and deso- 
lation 1 You complain of you know not what ; lassitude, list- 
lessness, despondency ; the blank gloom of unprofitableness 
and unsatisfactoriness wrapping the whole of life in dreary 
clouds and mists. Oh ! rest not an hour in such a mood of 
mind. You are a stranger in the earth ; and you find it 
strange to you ; so strange at times that you think you can 



STEANGEES AND PILGEIMS. 249 

find nothing in it to content or cheer you. But the earth 
in which you are a stranger is the Lord's ; and you are 
sojourners with him in it. Arise ; and for very shame, 
shake off your lethargy. Go to him whose guests you are. 
Talk with him about the land in which you are his guests, 
and which is his. Question him about all those things that 
vex or weary you. " I am a stranger in the earth, hide not 
thy commandments from me." 



250 LIVING AND DYING TO THE LORD. 



XY. 

LIVING AND DYING TO THE LOED. 

' ' For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dietli to himself For 
whether we live, we live nnto the Lord ; and whether we die, we 
die unto the Lord : whether we live therefore, or die, we are the 
Lord's." — Eomans xiv. 7, 8. 

This is an instance of Paul's way of rising from a particular 
question to a general principle. It is a way that is characteristic 
of the whole of the ethical or moral teaching of the gospel. A 
doubtful disputation springs up, on a small and narrow point 
of casuistry, as to meats or days. Instead of its being discussed 
by subtle argumentation and a fine balance of small reasons 
for and against, the case is at once carried into a higher, and 
purer, and broader, region of spiritual thought and duty, 
from whence there may be got both a nearer insight into 
heaven and a larger oversight of earth. In this view, what 
can be more refreshing than to observe, not only in our 
Lord's answers to the various adversaries who sought to take 
him in his talk, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, scribes, 
lawyers, priests ; but also in Paul's manner of dealing with 
the practical difficulties that even in his day had begun to 
embarrass the churches, the summary and decisive, and as it 
were off-hand abruptness with which questions that in 
the hands of sophists or Jesuits, whether Protestant or 
Popish, might simply furnish occasion for the nicest and 
vaguest subtilties of cloudy, casuistical refining, are lifted 
up to the brighter and holier atmosphere of the heavenly 



LIVING AND DYING TO THE LOED. 251 

places, where, being dead and "buried with Christ, and also 
risen with him, seeing light in his light, we may with single- 
ness of eye have the whole body full of light 1 

The present is a case in point. The peace of the church 
is threatened by questions about meats and days. The dis- 
puting parties have much to say, not only in support of their 
respective principles and practices ; that would have raised 
no difficulty ; but against tolerating or receiving as brethren 
those who differed from them. The case comes before the 
apostle. Instantly, at once, he carries it, as if by appeal or 
solemn reference, to the upper sanctuary. There at least 
both parties in the dispute are one. They are on the same 
footing ; having one Lord over them, and one judge before 
them. If the discussion of the doubtful question must go 
on, it will be, as it were, from a different position on both 
sides j from above, where they are one, not from below, 
where their differences emerge. 

But this is not all. Eaised to this heavenly platform, 
we not only see the particular matter at issue in a new and 
harmonising light, suggesting forbearance, charity, and peace ; 
we see ourselves and our brethren as occupying a more 
exalted and sacred position than we dreamt of when we 
sought to concuss or coerce one another iu regard to it. We 
belong, our brethren and we, not to one another, not even to 
ourselves. If we did, we might judge one another and judge 
for one another. But no ; we are not our own. We belong, our 
brethren and we alike, to a divine Master, who, in this, and 
in all things, is Lord over us all alike. There is here 

I. A fact stated, both negatively and positively ; " For 
none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. 
For whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; and whether 
we die, we die unto the Lord." And there is 

II. An inference deduced from the fact : " Whether we 
live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's." 



252 LIVING AND DYING TO THE LOKD. 

I. There is a fact here stated, respecting all "believers. It 
may be true of others ; but it is asserted here with special 
reference to them. They are called to realise it. And they 
are to realise it, not as an advice or command, with which 
they may or may not comply ; but as a great accomplished 
fact, to which they must conform. What, then, is the fact 1 
In what sense is it true of us, as believers, that none of us 
liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself ; but that 
whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; and whether we 
die, we die unto the Lord 1 

I take the negative form of the statement first. And 
I ask what is meant by the living to ourselves, and dying 
to ourselves, which is here so emphatically disclaimed or de- 
nied ? " None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to 
himself." There is a sense in which we speak of a man living 
to himself, when he consults and acts, in all that he proposes 
and does, with a view to himself, as his great end, with a 
selfish eye to his own interests or his own pleasure. 
Is this the explanation of the phrase here 1 It might 
be so, were it not for what follows, "none of us dieth 
unto himself." A selfish man may be said to live to 
himself ; and as believers, delivered from selfishness, it 
may be said of us that none of us liveth to himself. 
But what of the other clause — "None of us dieth to him- 
self" ? for it is the same word that is used by the apostle in 
both clauses ; not " no man," but " none." How is that 
denied of us ? Is it a matter within our choice 1 Can any 
man die unto himself in the sense in which a selfish man is 
described as living unto himself? It can scarcely be put as 
a distinctive characteristic of us as believers, that none of us 
dieth to himself, as if unbelievers died to themselves. It 
may be said perhaps that he does ; that he selfishly dies 
to himself, when, feeling death approach, he is only the 
more intensely occupied with himself, his comfort, his reputa- 



LIVING AND DYING TO THE LORD. 253 

tion, his affairs, and applies his whole mind merely to con- 
sider how his death can hest be turned to account for up- 
holding his character or forwarding his schemes. But that is 
really living to himself, not dying to himself, spending the 
last remnant of his life in selfishness ; not dying for his own 
profit. 

When dying or not dying to one's self is connected, as 
in the text, with living or not living to one's self, it is 
plain that states of being, not deeds or actions, must be 
intended. There can be no reference, in short, to what is 
matter of voluntary choice, but rather to what is ordered 
and arranged for us. It is not what we do by our own free 
will, but what we are irrespectively of our own free will, 
that the expressions before us denote. The life we have, 
the death we are to have are not to ourselves ; " none of 
us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself." 

But the question still remains, What precisely is to be 
understood by this living to one's self and dying to one's self, 
that is so emphatically disowned 1 And here it may first be 
asked, How far does this statement apply universally to all, 
to the unregenerate as well as to the believing people of God 1 
It is these last who are chiefly in the apostle's mind. But 
the statement, as a matter of fact, is universally true and' 
applicable to all, that " none of us liveth to himself, and 
none dieth to himself." 

Yes ; we may go to the man still in his natural state, 
unregenerate, unbelieving, and say to him boldly, You do 
not live to yourself ; you do not die to yourself. I enter the 
busy hall of commerce or chamber of exchange, where mer- 
chants most do congregate ; and amidst the crowd of 
restless and careworn speculators, all making haste to be 
rich in life, and to bequeath riches at death, I lift up a 
voice of warning and cry, " None of you liveth to himself, and 
none of you dieth to himself." I visit the haunt of gaiety 



254 LIVING AND DYING TO THE LORD. 

and dissipation, arresting the flow of idle talk, silencing the 
din of revelry and mirth ; I ring in the ears of these chil- 
dren of vanity the same ominous announcement, " None of 
you liveth to himself, and none of you dieth to himself." 
Live you may, for a few years longer ; and, so far as the 
bent and bias of your own will goes, you may live to 
yourselves alone. You may rejoice, young men or 
maidens, in your youth, and your heart may cheer you in the 
days of your youth ! You may walk in the ways of your 
own heart, and in the sight of your own eyes. And yet, 
plan and purpose as you may, strive and struggle as you 
may, not one of you all is living really to himself. The life 
you are living, such as it is, that life so self-engrossed, 
whether in the worship of gold or gain, or in the keen 
pursuit of pleasure, is not indeed to yourselves. You heap 
up riches, and know not who shall gather them. You live 
in wantonness, but you live in vain. Surely every man at 
his best state is altogether vanity. 

Yes ; among the multitudes who are living without God 
in the world, none of them all is truly living to himself! 
Each one of them is living a life, which, let him spend it as 
he may, is not to himself. It is not really to himself that, 
selfish as he may be to the very heart's core, he liveth. 
Alike in its source and in its whole stream and current, his life 
has a mystery and a meaning beyond any purpose or power 
of his. A man cannot isolate himself in this great and 
goodly universe of being. He cannot become either a 
hermit or a god ; he cannot live to himself 

And how emphatically and awfully true is it of the 
ungodly, in their latter end, that none of them dieth unto 
himself! If even their life is so little, in any profitable 
sense or to any practical account, really to themselves, how 
much less their death ! What ! the wicked die to them- 
selves. Nay. " Who can dwell with everlasting burnings 1" 



LIVING AND DYING TO THE LORD. 255 



VTho can stand in the day of the Lord's wrath ? " It is a 
fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God !" 
Judas, when he took the matter in his own hands, when 
he chose the time and manner of his own death, when he 
went and hanged himself, did he die to himself? Or the 
company of Corah, whom the earth swallowed up alive, did 
any one of them die to himself? Or take the vast number 
of whom it may be said that there are no bands in their 
death ; who close a life of vanity with self-righteous decorum 
or mere slumbering insensibility, does any one of them die 
to himself, to his own good, for his own benefit, to his own 
profit, as if his death were for himself alone ? 

How great, ye godless ones, is your madness ! If you could 
live to yourselves, or die to yourselves, then indeed ye might 
have some apology for trifling as you now do with the pre- 
cious gift of life and the awful doom of death. If, sinner, 
you could detach yourself from the system to which you be- 
long, and shake yourself free from all connection with the 
intelligent creation around you, and the moral government 
that is exercised over it, if yours were a desert and desolate 
island in the universe on which you found yourself dwelling 
alone, underived, independent, irresponsible ; yourself your 
own creator, preserver, lawgiver, and judge ; if your personal 
history, for time and for eternity, were to be constructed, at 
your own pleasure, apart from all laws and powers and move- 
ments beyond yourself; if it were to be written, by your 
own hand, in a leaf severed altogether from the great uni- 
versal book of destiny and duty and grace and judgment ; 
then it might be wise, or at least it might be safe, to deal 
with the issues of life and death as now you do ; leaving the 
settlement of all to future chance, or sacrificing all to present 
gaiety or gain. 

But if, my poor friend, the very reverse of all this 
is true ; if, speculate as you may, and struggle as you may, 



256 LIVING AND DYING TO THE LORD. 

you must yet, after all, find yourself, in life and in death, 
linked to an order of things above and beyond your own 
control ; if your position is really that of one who, coming 
into a busy and crowded factory, must either take his place 
and do his work, or be torn and trampled under foot, and 
perish ; if, as everything in your inward constitution, and 
everything in your outward condition, indicates, if, from the 
very first dawn of existence, downwards throughout infinite 
ages, you never for a single moment can order your own lot, 
or; be dealt with; by yourself, apart; but must, whether 
you will or no, and whether for weal or woe, fall in with the 
onward, irresistible march of a mighty, all-embracing, and 
never-ending moral administration, outside of you and be- 
yond all control of yours ; if, in short, none of you liveth 
to himself, and none of you dieth to himself ; oh ! what 
infatuation, what worse than the worst insanity is it, 
to make so little account as you seem to do of life and 
death ! 

Life and death ! Dread mysteries both of them ! Mys- 
teries all the more, because of the indissoluble ties by which 
they bind us to whatever power upholds the universe and 
whatever law will judge it ! Mysteries, above all, because of the 
tremendous issues that turn on opportunities so momentary ! 
Life that in an hour may close ! Death, once for all, never, 
never to come again, that you may have another chance, or 
make another trial, of dying ! And what then ? What be- 
yond? What but one unbroken and unchanging eternity, 
wherein, at last, if not before, reaping as they have sown, 
glorifying God in his penal and retributive justice, and suffer- 
ing the vengeance of eternal fire, the wicked, with the doomed 
angels, shall know terribly — because too late — that " none of 
us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself." 

Eut it is of believers that the apostle speaks when he says, 
" none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself." 



LIVING AND DYING TO THE LOED. 257 

For the believer in Jesus, by the very fact of his believing, 
both life and death are invested with an entirely new character 
and new value : and it must be with reference to this new 
character and new value, with which his life and his death 
are invested, that it is here said of him that he does not live 
to himself, or die to himself. Your life and death, then, O 
believers in Jesus, are not to yourselves. I mean your new 
life and new death, as believers. They are not to be ascribed 
to yourselves, as if they belonged to you, as being pur- 
chased or procured by you. It is not to yourselves that you 
owe your living the new spiritual life, and dying the new 
heavenly death ; living the life that is hid with Christ in 
God, and dying the death which has no sting, and which 
leaves to the grave no victory. Neither do your life and 
death belong to you, believers, as if for your own sakes 
and on your own account merely they were given to you. 

Your being made spiritually alive you owe not to your- 
selves ; it is a free gift. Nor is it a gift terminating or taking 
end in yourselves. It has respect to something out of and 
beyond yourselves. And in the same way, as to that death 
which it is your privilege to die, it is altogether a free gift. 
And, like the life of faith of which it is the close, it is not a 
gift bestowed on you for your own sakes only ; as if all that 
was contemplated in it were your own quiet and hopeful pass- 
age into eternity. It is not, in this view, to yourself only 
that you die. Your death has bearings and influences and 
results far out of the reach of your imagination or that of any 
of your friends. None of you liveth to himself, none dieth 
to himself ! 

But now secondly, let us look at the positive side of the 
Apostle's statement in our text. The believer most gladly 
and gratefully owns "that whether he lives, he lives unto 
the Lord ; and whether he dies, he dies unto the Lord." If 
you live at all, spiritually, and in so far as you live, you 

s 



258 LIVING AND DYING TO THE LORD. 

not only owe that life to the Lord, but you ascribe to 
the Lord, in the bestowing of that life upon you, an end 
beyond your own mere peace and safety, an end connected 
with himself; "whether you live, you live unto the Lord." 
The life you have got is not only from him ; it is also and 
emphatically to him. Your life, if indeed you live, as 
accepted in the Beloved, justified through the righteousness, 
renewed by the Spirit, and adopted into a participation of the 
sonship of Jesus, — your life is to the Lord. You are not 
made spiritually alive, merely for your own comfort and 
peace; whether you live, it is to the Lord. It is for 
himself that he has redeemed and renewed and quickened 
you. Thus he explains his dealings with his people of old, — 
" Thus saith the Lord God, I do not this for your sakes, 
house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake" (Ezek. xxxvi. 
22). And thus Paul accounts for his own conversion, — 
" Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first 
Jesus Christ might shew forth all long-suffering, for a pattern 
to them which should hereafter believe on him to life ever- 
lasting" (1 Tim. i. 16). 

And so also as to the death you have to die ; " whether we 
die, we die unto the Lord." You die ; even you that believe 
in Jesus. Very different, indeed, is your death from that of 
unregenerate men. Even they, as to their miserable death, 
die not unto themselves ; they die unto the Lord, unto him 
who hath made all things unto himself, yea even the wicked 
for the day of evil ; and who, willing to show his wrath and 
make his power known, endures, with much long-suffering, 
the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. No such death 
awaits you. To you the whole character of death is changed. 
It is no more penal ; it has no more sting. It is a falling 
asleep ; a departing to be with Christ. And, with all its 
blessedness, it is unto the Lord. Your hopeful death, like your 
holy life, you owe to him. And your death, — your being 



LIVING AND DYING TO THE LOED. 259 

enabled and permitted thus to die, — is unto him. For he is 
himself the great end and final cause of the whole economy of 
grace and the whole dispensation of the Spirit, through which it 
is that you do thus die. Well, therefore, may it be said that 
precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints ; 
their very dust is dear to him, and their blood is precious in 
his sight. For their death is to him ; they die to the Lord. 
He is glorified in their dying. 

These views may tend to soothe our spirits, in the contem- 
plation alike of the lives and of the deaths of the people of 
God. The lives of these servants of the Lord are not always 
such as we might beforehand have desired or expected. Nor 
do their deaths correspond in all instances with what might 
seem to us expedient. They often, in life, have a troubled 
and uneasy course. Bodily disease and disorder, mental 
depression, adverse circumstances and reverses of fortune, 
family afflictions, and loss of friends, may be observed as 
their thorns in the flesh. Or still more painfully to disturb 
their pilgrimage, still more distressingly to awaken dark 
thoughts in the onlookers, spiritual trials mar the smooth 
and even flow of their religious experience. And it may 
seem strange and almost unaccountable that holy men should 
be visited with such seasons of desertion and despondency as 
are allotted to them. 

But may not the explanation be found in this fact, that 
none of them liveth to himself 1 We are set, says Paul, as 
a spectacle to angels and men. The believer's life is not unto 
himself alone ; God has other ends to serve by it besides the 
believer's own peace, or even his sanctification and salvation. 
Did the Psalmist, for example, as a spiritual man, a subject 
of grace, and a child of God, live unto himself 1 Was it as 
living unto himself that he was made to undergo that 
marvellous variety of experiences of all sorts, joyous and 
grievous, sin-laden and sin-relieved, dark and bright, par- 



260 LIVING AXD DYING TO THE LOED. 

taking of all earth's vicissitudes, all hell's terrors, and all 
heaven's glories, which makes his harp the common instru- 
ment of praise for all believers in all ages, and his songs the 
staple alike of their praise and of their complaints, in every 
mood of mind and in every changing scene ? 

And to the death of the Lord's saints and servants, as 
well as to their tried and troubled life, may this same con- 
sideration reconcile us. These deaths may seem to be, many 
of them, premature ; unseasonable in respect of the age of 
those taken away ; unseasonable, especially, in respect of the 
exigencies of the times that can ill afford such losses. One 
consolation we have in the assurance that for themselves, 
being ripe to depart and to be with Christ is far better than 
to remain. But the text suggests another. The fact of its being 
good for themselves, is not the only or the chief reason of 
their renewal. None of them dieth to himself. If they die, 
they die unto the Lord. Their death is not for their own 
sakes merely, but for the Lord's ; it is to advance the Lord's 
cause and promote the Lord's ends. They die to the Lord. 

II. Such being the fact ; that " whether we live, we live 
unto the Lord ; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord;" 
it follows as a fair and necessary inference, that " whether we 
live or die, we are the Lord's. If, living and dying, we live 
and die to the Lord, this manifestly implies that, living and 
dying, we are the Lord's. "We are in his hands ; at his dis- 
posal ; absolutely and out and out his property, to be dealt 
with by him according to his good pleasure. Thus we and 
all men are the Lord's. 

All men, I say. For here again I must apply this word 
first, with all affection, yet with all faithfulness and plainness 
of speech, to the ungodly and unbelieving. It is true of you, 
whether you will or no, that living and dying you are the 
Lord's. And remember that the life and death in respect 



LIVING AND DYING TO THE LORD. 261 

of which you are the Lord's, are not unto yourselves, but unto 
the Lord. 

Ah ! in this view, I may well ask, Have the workers of 
iniquity no knowledge 1 You have life from the Lord and 
death too. Both the life and the death, you are solemnly 
assured, are not unto yourselves merely, but have ends and 
issues reaching far beyond yourselves, and involving manifold 
considerations besides your welfare alone. And you whose 
life and whose death are thus not unto yourselves, are yet 
yourselves, living and dying, the Lord's. He has you in his 
grasp, and you cannot escape. 

Ah ! were either of these two things otherwise, your case 
might not be so desperate as it is. If the life you live and 
the death you have to die were unto yourselves ; or if you, 
living and dying not unto yourselves, but whether you think 
it or not, whether you choose it or not, unto the Lord ; 
were still yourselves your own, and not his ; you might have 
some apology for your unconcern, and for living and dying as 
you please. But, my friends ! do but consider what it is 
to belong absolutely and helplessly to that very Lord who 
tells you that, live as you may, it is to him and his ends, and 
not to yourselves, that you live ; and die as you may, it is to 
him and to his ends, and not to yourselves, that you die ! 
Oh ! surely " it is hard for you to kick against the pricks !" 
Consider who this Lord is. Is it not he who, at a great 
price, has purchased this lordship over you, this ownership 
of you 1 " For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and re- 
vived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living." 

It is Jesus, who died and rose again, to whom the Father 
has" given power over all flesh. And what are the purposes 
which he has now in his heart, and, to which he must, of very 
necessity, make your living and your dying subservient 1 
Are they not purposes stretching infinitely beyond any selfish 
views and aims of yours touching your own mere safety and 



262 LIVING AND DYING TO THE LOED. 

impunity 1 What ! Did lie himself leave the glory of the 
upper sanctuary, and tabernacle in flesh here on the earth, 
and endure the pains of guilt and wrath, and he in the dark 
grave, and burst the bands of death and hell, and ascend tri- 
umphant to heaven, for no higher, holier end than you, in 
your living and dying, might propose to your carnal minds ? 
He seeks the glory of his Father ; the glory of his Father's 
justice as well as of his Father's love ; his penal severity as 
well as his rich and tender mercy. He seeks the establish- 
ment of his people, in righteousness and peace, for ever. 

Ay ! And it is for accomplishing these ends that he has 
it made sure to him, in the everlasting covenant, that you, 
sinners, every one of you, whether you live, live not to 
yourselves, but to him ; and whether you die, die not to 
yourselves, but to him ! Else you might, living or dying, 
frustrate and make void the great designs of his mediatorial 
cross and crown. And you, who must thus* have your living 
and your dying alike made to serve these great designs of his, 
— you, whether you live, or whether you die, are yourselves 
his ; his to be used, and turned to account, and disposed of, 
for these designs of his : you are his ; altogether and for 
ever his ; prisoners in his prison house ; criminals reserved 
for his judgment ; enemies given over to his execution upon 
them of deserved and inevitable wrath. I beseech you, be- 
loved brethren, to " flee from this wrath to come." " Kiss 
ye the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, 
when his wrath is kindled but a little." 

But again, I turn to you who believe. My text concerns 
you. And it does so both for comfort and for admonition. 

It is your comfort to know that, whether you live or 
die, you are the Lord's ; and very specially to know this in 
connection with the assurance which goes before, that " none 
of you liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself." Is it 
indeed true that your life and death, as spiritual no less than as 



LIVING AND DYING TO THE LORD. 263 

natural men, are not to yourselves, but to the Lord 1 Then, 
of very necessity, for his own name's sake, he must take 
you, and have you, and keep you, living or dying, as his own. 
Whether you live, you live to him. Well ; that he may 
turn your life, which is his gift, to his own wise and gracious 
purposes, since it is unto him that you live, he must have 
you, thus living, to be his, and his alone. 

Ah ! what a security have you here, believers. What a 
guarantee, both for the safe preservation and for the right 
ordering of your life, as a life that you live not unto your- 
selves, but unto the Lord ! If the life he gives you, — the life 
spiritual, I mean, over and above the life natural, — were for 
ends and uses of your own ; if it were unto yourselves ; you 
might dread the risk of your forfeiting it, or of his withdraw- 
ing it, or suffering it to languish and decay. A woman may 
forget her sucking child, and cease to have compassion on the 
son of her womb, when she is forced to view the life, drawn 
from her womb, and nourished by her bosom, as no more 
pleasant or profitable to herself, but only turned to the ac- 
count of selfish ends, in which she can have no share and no 
concern. But the Lord will not forget you. He cannot. 
For your life of grace, which you have from him, is also 
to him ; very profitable to him, as redounding to his glory ; 
very pleasant and congenial, as being according to his heart. 
Because your life is thus to him, as well as of him, he will 
see to its safe keeping and final blessedness. He will grave 
your names on the palms of his hands, and guard you as the 
apple of his eye. 

And if thus living unto him, you are so securely his, 
—ah ! how, as regards your dying, may you cast all your care 
upon him ! Your dying is unto him. And therefore it con- 
cerns him to see to it, — and he will assuredly see to it, — that 
all about your dying shall be rightly arranged. Dying, you 
are his ; for you die unto him. Your dying, indeed, may not 



264 LIVING AXD DYING TO THE LORD. 

be so timed or so adjusted as you or your friends might; judge 
best. But still you and they have this confidence, that your 
dying, whensoever, wheresoever, howsoever, death may come, 
is and must be unto the Lord. You may leave therefore the 
ordering of it, as to time, place, and manner, entirely to him. 
In your dying, which is unto him, you are and must be his. 

Is not this enough to allay all anxiety beforehand, and to 
remove every fear when your hour arrives 1 You are tempted 
sometimes to anticipate in imagination the circumstances of 
your latter end ; and to speculate as to how things may then 
fall out, and how you may be able to hold on. But, my 
friends ! beware of such looking ahead. It is always danger- 
ous as well as presumptuous to be asking a sign, or seeking 
to put to the proof either yourselves or God as to trials not 
yet come. " Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." 
There is no promise of grace in advance of the occasion for 
it ; no warrant to look for help from God before trouble, but 
only for God himself as a very present help in trouble. And 
as to your death as well as your life, is it not enough to know 
that since " none of you liveth to himself, and no man dieth 
to himself," therefore, living and dying, you are the Lord's 1 

The text is applicable for admonition as well as for 
comfort. It gives the death-blow to all selfishness, both as 
regards your judgment of others, and as regards your manage- 
ment of yourselves. Tor if the fact that, whether you live, 
you live unto the Lord, or whether you die, you die unto the 
Lord, makes you, whether you live or whether you die, the 
Lord's, in respect of the interest which he must on that ac- 
count feel in you and the care he must take of you ; it must 
make you the Lord's also, in respect of your obligation, whether 
you live or whether you die, to feel and own yourselves to be 
his, and to seek not your own ends, but his. It is he who 
gives you your happy life as believers, and your hopeful 
death. And he gives you both for the express purpose that 



LIVING AND DYING TO THE LORD. 265 

they may be not unto yourselves, but unto him ; nay, with 
the emphatic intimation that they are so. You are not lords 
over one another, entitled to dictate to one another, or to 
criticise and condemn one another, in matters of doubtful 
disputation. You are not lords over yourselves, entitled to 
have your will consulted, or to take it amiss when your will 
is crossed. Whether you live or whether you die, you are 
the Lord's. For £he life of faith which he gives, and the 
death of hope which he promises, are unto him. " I do not 
this for your sakes, house of Israel, but for mine holy 
name's sake." 

I believe it, Lord, help thou mine unbelief. I am 
willing, Lord, make me more willing, to accept the life, the 
death, on that footing, on these terms. And so accepting 
thine unspeakable gift, for which thanks be to thee, I dare 
not set myself up as a judge of others or a guide to myself. 
I can but ask thee, Lord, to lead me, as one blind, by a way 
that I know not, and so far as thou permittest me to see, to 
give me evermore singleness of eye, that my whole body may 
be full of light. 



266 CHRIST'S LORDSHIP OVER THE DEAD AND LIVING. 



XVI. 

CHRIST'S LORDSHIP OYER THE DEAD AND 
LIVING. 

"For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he 
might be Lord both of the dead and living." — Romans xtv. 9.* 

The lordship here ascribed to Christ is very emphatically 
represented to be the object or end of his death and resur- 
rection. It is that for which he was appointed to die and 
rise again. It is that with a view to which he actually died 
and rose again. There is thus, at all events, a close connec- 
tion of design and dependence established between his dying 
and rising again, and his being Lord both of the dead and 
living. "What precisely that connection is, and what are 
its practical fruits and issues, may perhaps be best considered 

* At the outset I may explain that, by consent of the best critics, 
it is admitted that there are not in the original text three words 
descriptive of Christ's work and its reward, but only two — not " died, 
and rose, and revived," but only "died and rose," or "died and re- 
vived." There is an easy explanation of the received text. Some 
transcriber may have tried to put the truth of the text more emphati- 
cally, by means of a different word from what had formerly been used 
to denote the Lord's resurrection. And soon all the three might come 
to be employed, as giving additional emphasis to the thought. But I am 
free from the necessity of finding three meanings for the three words in 
our version. I may use the text as it stands, but with this qualifica- 
tion, that it is for the sake of emphasis merely that " rose and revived " 
are conjoined ; and that I deal with it not as discriminating between 
these two words, but as identifying them. 



CHRIST'S LORDSHIP OVER THE DEAD AND LIVING. 267 

after we have inquired a little into the lordship itself. 
First, then, let us ask how or in what sense Christ is Lord 
both of the dead and living 1 Secondly, how does his being 
so result or flow from his dying and rising again ? And 
thirdly, what bearings of a practical sort has his being thus 
Lord both of the dead and living, in virtue of his dying and 
rising again, on his own people, and on mankind at large 1 

The first of these questions is preliminary merely, and 
subsidiary to the other two, but yet is all-important to a 
right understanding of them. 

I. It is plainly a mediatorial lordship that Christ is here 
said to have. It is a lordship that can belong to him only 
in his mediatorial character. It is altogether apart from the 
supreme dominion belonging to him from everlasting as one 
with the Father and the Holy Ghost in the undivided essence 
of the Godhead, and in the eternal counsel of the Godhead 
for the government of the universe. It may be, and indeed 
is, a lordship which he could not possess were he not, in his 
own nature, " over all, God blessed for ever." It is a lord- 
ship, however, not possessed from eternity otherwise than in 
decree. As to actual possession, it is bestowed in time and 
dependent on events in time. It is as God-man, as 
Immanuel, as the one mediator between God and man, the 
man Christ Jesus, that he is Lord. 

But of whom now, in that capacity, is he Lord 1 That 
is the question here. Is it a universal lordship over all 
things, over all created beings, intelligences, powers, influ- 
ences 1 Such a lordship is conferred on him as mediator. 
So Scripture testifies. But is that what is meant here % Or 
is it a more limited lordship over his own peculiar people 
that is intended 1 The reference to his death and resurrec- 
tion, as procuring or preparing the way for the lordship here 
spoken of, does not of itself determine that point. For both 
his lordship over all things and his lordship over his people 



268 chbist's lordship over the dead axd living. 

must be traced to his dying and rising again as their com- 
mon source. 

But the occasion of this whole argument may determine 
which of the two it is that is in the apostle's view. What 
is his drift ? He is dealing with a practical matter ; a matter 
of simple duty among believers. He is teaching a very plain 
lesson of Christian charity and forbearance. You differ from 
one another about some points of doubtful disputation ; 
whether, in certain circumstances, you should act thus, or 
thus j do this or that. It is assumed that they are points 
about wbich believers may honestly and conscientiously differ, 
without prejudice to their character and standing. Well, 
what should be your rule of conduct towards one another, 
and what the reason of it % Do not judge for one another. 
Do not judge one another. Let every man judge for himself, 
and judge himself. That is the rule. And the reason cor- 
responds to the rule, for it is this — You do not belong to 
one another ; you are not one another's lords. jSTay, for that 
matter, you do not belong to yourselves \ you are not your 
own lords. One is your lord, to whom alone you all belong. 
It is Christ, who, that he might be your Lord, both died and 
rose again. 

Thus far the argument tells for its being the more re- 
stricted lordship that is meant. But here a new question 
may occur. Why is there any mention made of the dead 1 
Why is the alternative or cumulative idea of the dead as 
distinct from the living introduced ? The argument does not 
seem to require this. It is the living only who are or can 
be concerned about the rule. It should be enough if the 
reason applied to them and embraced them alone. What 
have the dead to do with this lesson, with the rule, or with 
its reason ? One answer to this question may be that the 
phrase is simply meant to intensify the thought of Christ's 
lordship as being very complete and thorough ; absolutely per- 



CHRIST'S LORDSHIP OVER THE DEAD AND LIVING. 269 

feet; embracing your whole being. But may not this be 
another answer % The living, who have to do with the rule 
and the reason for it, are soon to be themselves the dead. 
You who are now living are to look at the point in dispute 
in the light in which it will appear to you when you come 
to die, when you are dead. You no more live to yourselves 
than you die to yourselves. You live unto the Lord as truly 
as you die unto the Lord. Living, you are the Lord's, as 
much as you are so when dying or dead. You have as little 
right to set up for yourselves in this matter of judging for 
one another, or judging one another, now when you are living, 
as you will have when you are dead. You are equally 
amenable to the Lord now as then. You live to him as 
thoroughly as you die to him. Living you are his as abso- 
lutely as when you die or are dead. For " to this end 
Christ both died and rose, that he might be Lord both of 
the dead and living." 

You are thus led to see, as regards all these questions, the 
present in the future ; to consider what you now are, to 
one another, to yourselves, to the Lord, in the view of 
what you will be, and will apprehend yourselves to be, when 
you die, when you are dead. How would a departed saint, 
one of the pious dead, a believer gone hence, — how would 
such a one think, and feel, and act with reference to what is 
now at issue and in discussion among you 1 Put yourself, 
I say to each one among you, in the position of such a one ; 
suppose yourself, from that heavenly world of the dead, 
to be contemplating this earthly world of the living, and 
looking into the question upon which you are now pronouncing 
so decided, and perhaps so censorious, a judgment. I do 
not ask if it appears as important as before. But I ask if 
you can take the same attitude in regard to it that you 
scrupled not to take before. Will you venture, as a denizen 
of the upper sanctuary, to be as dictatorial, as magisterial, 



270 CHRIST'S LORDSHIP OVER THE DEAD AND LIVING. 

as judicial, as you are tempted to be in the lower region of 
the church's present habitation? Will you take as much 
upon you, and give yourself so confident an air, and pro- 
nounce as dogmatically upon your fellows, then as now ? 
Will not you feel yourself to be less, and Christ to be more ; 
yourself to be nothing, and Christ to be all in all ? Dead, 
you will thus own his lordship ; living, own it all the same. 

Here, then, is a practical question. Do I own Christ as 
Lord both of the dead and living % Is he as much my Lord 
now, while I am living, as he will be when I die ? Of 
course he is so, in fact. But is he so, in respect of my 
realisation of the fact, and my acting of it out ? 

Have you ever tried to imagine how Christ will be Lord 
of all the dead at last ; how he is Lord of the dead now ? 
I mean the pious dead, yonder company of the church's 
worthies ; the men of whom the world was not worthy. 
How do they know and acknowledge Christ's lordship over 
them 1 what is their manner of life under it ? I cannot 
say, it must be left to each one of you to work out the ques- 
tion. The text throws little or no light on it, not at least 
directly. More may come out as we proceed. Meanwhile, 
the principle seems to be clearly established, that the lordship 
asserted on behalf of Christ is a lordship over his people ; 
and such a lordship over them living, as has its type, one 
may say, as well as its consummation, in his lordship over 
them when dead. " He is Lord both of the dead and 
living." 

II. The connection between this lordship of Christ and 
his death and resurrection is very close. " To this end 
Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord 
both of the dead and living." It was " the joy set before 
him, for which he endured the cross, despising the shame, 
and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." 



Christ's lordship over the dead and living. 271 

It is the appropriate recompense of reward, the natural fruit 
and issue, the legitimate consequence and crowning result, of 
his dying and rising again, that he is Christ and Lord. 

It is so in many views and on many accounts. But there 
is one fact or principle which may serve comprehensively to 
bring out its true ground or rationale. That fact or prin- 
ciple is the oneness, the identity, in respect of law as well as 
of nature, between Christ and his people. For you must 
consider in what character Christ died and rose again. He 
was not an isolated private individual, acting or transacting 
with the Father, in that great trial, for himself alone. He 
bore a representative character. He had gathered up in his 
one single person all the interests of all his people. He was 
theirs, in that day, and they were his ; he their proxy, 
surety, substitute ; they his property, his members, part and 
parcel of himself. Lordship over them, in the sense of ab- 
solute proprietorship, or right of ownership, in them ; lord- 
ship over them, as of a man over his own body ; is really 
involved, as already constituted, in his dying and rising 
again. He has them as much his, as he has his own body, 
his own person ; as much his, to be at his disposal, in his 
keeping, under his hand. This is at least lordship begun ; 
lordship in the germ or bud. 

Look at it for a little. Look, in this point of view, on 
Christ dying and rising again. There is not much of appa- 
rent lordship of any kind here at all. In his dying and rising 
again, he appears rather as passive than as active ; acted 
upon rather than acting. Or, in so far as he acts, his action 
is the voluntary surrender of himself to be dealt with by the 
Father judicially, first in the way of subjection to death, the 
wages' of sin, and then in the way of justification, or resur- 
rection to life, the reward of righteousness. He consents, in 
dying, to be treated by the righteous Father as guilty, suffer- 
ing the doom of guilt, and in rising again to be treated by 



272 CHRIST'S LORDSHIP OVER THE DEAD AND LIVING. 

the righteous Father as righteous ; and justified and recom- 
pensed accordingly. He is servant, as it might seem, and 
not Lord, in the whole of that wondrous transaction of law 
and justice between the Father and him. In his death he 
says, " Mine ears hast thou bored; I am thy servant." In his 
resurrection the Father says, "Thou art a priest for ever, 
after the order of Melchisedec." Thus, dying and rising 
again, he stands forth as not Lord, but servant, servant all 
through. And it is through this service that he reaches his 
lordship. And the lordship answers to the service in all 
respects. Mark well the correspondence. 

The persons interested are the same. His death and 
resurrection, in order to his lordship, must have reference to 
all over whom his lordship extends, and to none else. He 
died and rose for this end, that, in virtue of his dying and 
rising, he might be Lord both of the dead and living. It 
is not, however, all the dead and living that are here meant. 
It is not mankind universally and indiscriminately. He is, 
no doubt, Lord over all mankind, as he is head over all things 
to the church, which is his body. And that lordship or 
high priesthood is no doubt connected with his dying and 
rising again. But that is not the lordship here asserted. 
What is asserted is a lordship which, whatever it may have 
in common with the other, is in itself peculiar. It is lord- 
ship such as true believers alone can acknowledge. For they 
alone can acknowledge it as a lordship founded on the 
Lord's dying and rising again. They may not be more 
thoroughly and absolutely in his hands, as mediatorial Lord, 
than all the rest of the human race are, or than all creation 
is. And in both cases his mediatorial lordship is the fruit 
of his dying and rising. 

But, in the first place, there is intelligence and consent 
in the one case that we cannot find in the other. Christ 
dying and rising again is Lord of me ; Lord of me even if I 



Christ's lordship over the dead and living. 273 

am living and dying in unbelief. He is so in spite of me, 
whether I understand or not, whether I will it or not. But 
I believe, he himself helping my unbelief. And now he is 
Lord of me, with my full intelligence and most cordial 
consent. 

Then, secondly, there is a real distinction, as regards the 
dependence of Christ's lordship, in his dying and rising 
again, between the two cases. It is not merely that men 
generally do not apprehend the thing as believing men appre- • 
hend it. But in the thing itself there is a difference. It is 
all-important to note and understand the difference, especially 
the apostle's practical point of view. Christ's general lord- 
ship over all, considered as the result and reward of his con- 
senting to die and to be raised from the dead, is a very great 
and a very solemn fact. It should strike terror into every 
bosom. He is Lord of thee, sinner. He is Lord of 
thee by right of his dying and rising again ; so dying and 
rising again that thou mayest have him, if thou wilt, all sin- 
ful as thou art, to be Lord of thee for thy salvation, but yet, 
oh ! lay it to heart, so dying and rising again that he is Lord 
of thee anyhow ; Lord of thee living and dead ; Lord of thee 
for ever. 

But, after all, this lordship is rather a necessary accom- 
paniment or consequence of Christ's dying and rising again, 
than a proper fruit or natural issue of it. It is indispen- 
sable to the accomplishment of the end for which he died 
and rose again, that he should have as part of his recompense 
this wide prerogative of universal lordship. But the end 
itself, the joy set before him, was surely a lordship more 
peculiar and more precious. " Father, glorify thy Son. Thou 
hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give 
eternal life to as many as thou hast given him." Here is uni- 
versal, with a view to limited lordship, power over all flesh, 
in order to the giving of eternal life to as many as the Father 

T 



274 CHRIST'S LORDSHIP OVER THE DEAD AND LIVING. 

hath given him. And it is all based on his dying and rising 
again ; on his finished and accepted work. " I have glorified 
thee on the earth : I have finished the work which thou 
gavest me to do." Thus clearly is it manifest that the 
persons savingly interested in the Mediator's service of 
dying and rising again are the only persons over whom his 
lordship is here claimed, or asserted as the direct fruit and 
proper issue of his death and resurrection ; the real end with 
a view to which he both died, and rose, and revived. 

Not only are the parties interested the same, but 
there must be harmony or correspondence between the lord- 
ship itself and that on which it rests, and from which it 
flows. 

It rests on service and flows from service. And the 
service is the service of sacrifice. He died and rose as a 
servant; as a servant rendering the service of sacrifice. 
And if he died and rose in that character and capacity, 
the lordship, with a view to which he died and rose, must 
have in it still that quality or condition. He died and 
rose that he might be Lord of those whom his service of 
dying and rising really concerns ; Lord of them, whether 
dead or living. But he died and rose, not that he might be 
different as Lord from what he was as dying and rising. 
No. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. It 
would seem, therefore, that his lordship must be, as regards 
them, in some sense a continuation of his service. It must 
retain the spirit as well as accept the fruit of the service. 
Christ, as his people's Lord, cannot be to them different from 
what he was when as the Father's servant on their behalf he 
died and rose. 

For pre-eminently in his case we must beware of com- 
mitting the error into which we are too apt to fall, with 
reference to ourselves and others, in our conceptions of the 
unseen state after death ; the error I mean of fancying that 



Christ's lordship over the dead and living. 275 

in the mere passing from the temporal to the eternal world 
there is a break, a blank, a breach of the continuity of the 
line of conscious existence ; so that the immortal spirit may- 
be ushered into that other sphere, under different auspices 
from those which mark its departure hence ; and may begin 
its life anew upon a new footing. It is a grievous and 
dangerous error, when we suffer it to influence our dealings 
either with ourselves or with our friends. It is not to be 
tolerated, nor anything like it, when it is Christ that is 
concerned ; especially when it is his relation to his people 
that is in question. He is the same, yesterday, to-day, and 
for ever. 

Thus, carrying back the lordship into the dying and 
rising, we may see, even in the humiliation, the real glory of 
the exaltation. 

He is Lord, when he dies and rises and lives ; Lord, 
in their life and in their death, of those for whom he dies 
and rises and lives. It is as thus fully, in that sense and to 
that effect, Lord of them, that he dies and rises and lives for 
them. True, his dying and living again is, in respect of 
causal order, the prior condition of his being Lord. Still, 
in his very dying and living again, he is Lord, Lord of those 
for whom he dies and lives again. His dying and living 
again is a lordly act as respects them ; a right lordly act, not 
in its issue only, but in itself. It is as Lord of them, living 
and dying, that he dies for them and lives again. JSTor is it 
merely in the way of anticipation, or in respect merely of an 
infallible fore-ordaining decree giving them to him in 
covenant from the beginning, that he is their Lord in his 
dying and living again. His lordship over them, in his 
dying and living again for them, is not prospective merely, 
but present. Not merely after, but in his dying and living 
again, he is their Lord. His dying and living again is in 
itself an act or exercise of lordship over them. He not 



276 CHRIST'S LORDSHIP OVER THE DEAD AND LIVING. 

merely purchases, he asserts and vindicates his lordship 
over them, when he dies to redeem them to himself as his 
own with his precious blood, and lives again to present them 
as his own to the Father, saying, Behold I and the little ones 
whom thou hast given me. 

It is seen to be so, if his cross, as the crisis of his 
humiliation preparatory to his glory, is rightly and spiritually 
contemplated. Doubtless, there is in that cross much that 
is significant of anything rather than lordship ; ignominy 
and shame, passive helplessness and weakness, and to a 
deeper insight, service ending in sacrifice, the submission of 
the victim, bowing his head to the stroke of justice, the very 
opposite, as it might seem, of anything like lordly power. 
But it must have been a lordly port, a right lordly bearing, 
that won from the Eoman soldier the exclamation, " Truly 
this was the Son of God." And it was a clearer and more 
spiritual view of the royal majesty of the sufferer, in his very 
suffering, that prompted the dying prayer, " Lord, remember 
me when thou comest into thy kingdom." 

Might we not with advantage dwell more than we do in 
this aspect of the lordship of Christ, over us personally as 
not merely flowing from his redeeming work for us, in the 
way of natural consequence and appropriate reward, but as 
really forming part of it and entering into it as an essential 
element and living principle of power. May we not be apt 
to look on Jesus Christ, our Lord, dying on the cross and 
rising again, rather as a deliverer provided for us than as a 
ruler and lord appointed over us 1 Do we not dwell more 
on his service and sacrifice for us than on his lordship over 
us, or separate the one from the other in our thoughts ? 
May it not be good to contemplate the one great transaction 
of his death and resurrection more than we do, not merely as 
a work undertaken and accomplished for our sakes and on 
our behalf, but as in itself, in its very nature, an assertion 



CHRIST'S LOEDSHIP OVEE THE DEAD AND LIVING. 277 

and recovery of his dominion over us, as Lord both of the 
dead and living ? 

Then, carrying forward, as it were, the death and resur- 
rection into the lordship consequent thereon, we may rever- 
ently, I think, trace a certain savour or influence from the 
one, modifying the character and manner of exercise of the 
other. 

Thus the character of the lordship may be regarded as 
affected by the preliminary experience of him who wields it. 
For that experience is not like an ordinary fact in history, a 
stepping-stone merely, in the order of cause and effect, to 
something beyond itself, which may be quite detached and 
distinct in nature from itself. Neither is it a mere condition, 
which, when once fulfilled, may be lost sight of in the view 
of what its fulfilment obtains for the fulfiller of it. It enters 
into the very heart of the lordship, even as it abides and be- 
cause it abides ever in the heart of him whose lordship it is. 
And it does so in a way implying something more than the 
Lord's recollection or reminiscence of it, though that is much. 
For these are precious words that can never lose their power 
and pathos — " He still remembers in the skies his tears, his 
agonies, and cries." It is a fresh, constant, living element in 
the lordship itself; making it a lordship of a very peculiar 
type, altogether singular and unique. It may be difficult to 
grasp it in logical thought, or fix it in a formal definition. 
But, if I mistake not, the believing heart knows something, 
or perhaps rather feels something, of what it is. 

There is such a thing as a lordship of pure and simple 
sovereignty, which may be conceived of as vested in one 
sitting aloft on a throne of unapproachable majesty. To 
such a lordship these words of the Psalmist may apply — 
" Thou art my Lord ; my goodness extendeth not to thee." 
There may be also such a thing as a lordship more familiar ; 
coming down, as it were, nearer the level of one subject to 



278 CHRIST'S LORDSHD? OVER THE DEAD AND LTvTXG. 

it, and partaking, perhaps, more of the nature of friendly 
oversight than of the nature of strict dominion or authority. 
But such ideas, even if we could realise them in combination, 
do not adequately describe the lordship of Christ, so as to 
satisfy the loyal souls of his redeemed. They see always in 
the living Lord the dying, bleeding Lamb. It is the Lamb 
who is in the midst of the throne ; and he is there as the 
Lamb slain ; of the very same frame of mind still ; having 
at heart the very same objects ; feeling still as he has ever 
felt j acting still as he has ever acted ; sustaining still the 
very selfsame relations he has ever sustained to his Father and 
to his people ; discharging the selfsame offices ; doing the self- 
same work. 

Hence, in the manner of its exercise, as well as in its 
essential character, the lordship of Christ is peculiar ; being 
affected by the previous preliminary experience, which is 
prolonged, as it were, and enters into it. The spirit of the 
lordship, being identical with the spirit of that antecedent 
service of sacrifice, must control the manner in which it is 
carried out. 

In particular it must determine and direct it as a lordship 
running in the line of highest law and deepest love. For in 
his dying and rising these two elements meet ; highest law 
and deepest love ; law magnified and made honourable by 
such a tribute of obedience to its holy command and endur- 
ance of its just judgment as only he could render who is at 
once the Father's fellow and the Father's willing subject, and 
love more profound in the terrible sacrifice by which it purged 
guilt and prevailed over death, than a whole eternity of bounty 
to the sinless could have displayed or proved. And it is as 
thus dying and rising, in a sense, evermore, that he is Lord 
of me ; Lord of me to cause that very law and that very love 
to meet in my heart as truly as they meet in that great heart 
of his which broke to make them one on Calvary. 



Christ's loedship oyer the dead and living. 279 

The thought of lordship exercised after a fashion such 
as that might well appal nie, lawless and unloving as I am, 
were it not for this very consideration, that it is lordship full 
fraught, and all-pervaded with the sense and savour of these 
dread realities, the dying and the rising. They are realities 
to him and in him now ; now as much as ever. As my 
Lord, by the power of his Spirit he makes them realities to 
me and in me, as thoroughly so, as they were and are realities 
to him and in him. He subdues me by uniting me to him- 
self ; to himself dying, I am crucified with him ; to himself 
living, he liveth in me ; to himself as my Lord, in terms of 
law graciously fulfilled and love righteously triumphant. 

III. In the light of its connection with his dying and 
rising, let us now look at the lordship of Christ more practi- 
cally, in its bearing upon those over whom it is exercised ; the 
dead ; the living ; of his own people first ; and then, all else. 

As dying and rising, he is Lord of the dead j of his 
own dead. He is their Lord in the very article and agony 
of their death ; giving them victory in the very moment of 
death ; taking from death his sting ; and taking it from him 
precisely when he can urge it home most vehemently ; on a 
deathbed ; where the sense of sin is apt to be keenest. As 
their Lord, dying and rising, he gives them grace and strength 
to utter the challenge, " death, where is thy sting ? 
grave, where is thy victory*?" 

Then, as their Lord, their Lord in virtue of his dying 
and rising, he receives them to himself. They depart to be 
with him ; absent from the body, present with the Lord ; 
with the Lord as dying and rising ; claiming to be their 
Lord on the ground of his dying and rising ; and on the 
ground of that as not a past event in history, but a present 
and eternal reality. They pass into the arms of one who is 
their Lord ; their Lord evermore, as dying and rising. 



280 Christ's lordship over the dead and living. 

What it is for them to be with him and under him as 
their Lord now, their Lord now always on such a footing as 
that, who can tell? Perfect rest, unbroken repose, may 
well be theirs. Away from all that might suggest any idea 
of insurrection or insubordination, clasped to the bosom of 
one who claims them as his subjects on the ground of his 
having made common cause with them as their brother, 
dying and rising ; nay, who claims them in virtue of his 
still virtually in a sense dying and rising evermore afresh as 
their brother and their Lord. What peace may be their 
portion ; peace in having him as their Lord ; their Lord 
upon the footing of an unchallenged and consummated re- 
demption ; through his dying and rising ! 

But his lordship over the dead is not yet complete. It 
reaches to the deliverance of their mortal bodies from the 
power of the grave. As their Lord he bids the sea give up 
its dead, and the gaping earth surrender its prey. As their 
Lord he changes their mortal bodies, that they may be 
fashioned like unto his own glorious body ; his body glori- 
fied, and become a spiritual body, in virtue of his dying and 
rising. So they bear the image of their heavenly Lord. 
And ever thereafter, as their Lord, inweaving into his lord- 
ship his dying and rising, he leads them among the many 
mansions of his Father's house, and finds them, as he rules 
them, congenial subjects. "No idea of independence is in 
their bosoms ; no thought of any right to consult and act for 
themselves, or to coerce and judge one another. The dead, 
of whom he is then Lord, are revived and reawakened to 
activity. But it is to activity unselfish and unsuspicious. 
They all serve the Lord, and neither serve nor judge one 
another. 

This perfect lordship of Christ over the dead ; his 
own dead ; his in virtue of his dying and rising ; is to be 
apprehended and realised as in the same sense and on the 



CHRIST'S LORDSHIP OVER THE DEAD AND LIVING. 281 

same ground a lordship over the living ; his own living 
ones j you who live in him. He is your Lord ; the Lord of 
you living ; the Lord of your life ; of the life which you 
have in him as dying and rising. He is the Lord of you 
while living, exactly as he is to be the Lord of you when 
dead. For to this end he both died, and rose, and revived, 
not merely that he might be Lord of you when dead, in the 
future world, where his lordship, as it might seem, might be 
more readily owned and more pleasantly exercised ; but that 
he might be Lord of you while living ; as you are now, and 
where you are now. It is with his lordship over you in 
that view that you are now practically concerned. It is 
to be acknowledged and recognised by you now as the very 
same with what it will be to you when you are dead and 
gone. 

You cannot indeed now take in, as you may hope to do 
then, the full meaning of that dying and rising on which the 
lordship is based, and with which it is identified ; and there- 
fore you may not be able to perceive and realise all that is 
implied in your acknowledgment and recognition of the 
lordship, any more than you can see all the beauty, blessed- 
ness, and glory of the lordship itself. Tor it is a lordship 
which can be fully understood and appreciated only when 
the dying and rising with which it is one are fully known. 
That cannot be in this life ; nor even all at once in the life 
to come. For there is in that dying and rising a height and 
depth, a height of supremest reverence for law, and a depth 
of love reaching the lowest hell, which eternity will not 
suffice to measure. And therefore also the lordship, in its 
character and mode of exercise, will be ever unfolding itself 
and making itself realised throughout the everlasting ages. 
Still, however, that does not touch the identity of the lord- 
ship all throughout ; its being the same now as then. He 
is Lord, as of the dead, so of the living. He lords it over 



282 Christ's lordship over the dead axd living. 

you living, as he has ever lorded it over his people dying and 
dead ; as he will lord it over you when you die and after 
you are dead ; now, as then, in virtue and in the spirit of his 
dying and rising. 

Surely it is a blessed lordship for you now to realise and 
own. To think that he is your Lord, as dying for you and 
rising again ; your Lord as surely now, amid all changes, as 
he will he hereafter in the changeless eternity ; that he has 
you now in his possession, redeemed by his death, and quick- 
ened by his life, as surely as he has any of his saints who 
have already entered into his rest ; that you belong to him 
as your Lord, and are his property while you live now on 
this earth, as inalienably as those do who have passed beyond 
all this earth's risks and hazards. Is not that a source of 
confidence alike in life and in death 1 And is it not also a 
motive to most thorough self-surrender? For indeed it is 
only through most complete and thorough self-surrender that 
this great security of refuge in the lordship of Christ as dying 
and rising can be reached. How may I assert and vindicate 
my freedom from any who would captivate or condemn me, 
any who would rule or judge me ] How but by an unreserved 
appeal to Christ as my Lord ; lording it over me as dying for 
me, and rising and living for me 1 And how may I enter 
such an appeal otherwise than in the attitude of one surren- 
dering all right of rule and judgment in my own person ; 
judging no man, and refusing to be judged by any ; because 
I know no other judge or ruler but the Son of the Highest ; 
who to this end both died, and rose, and revived, that he might 
be Lord both of the dead and of the living. Ah ! to know 
him now while I live, in that character and in that relation 
to me, as thoroughly and as exclusively as I shall know him 
hereafter when I am dead, if I am really his ! Would that 
this were my highest ambition, the most intense and earnest 
longing of my soul ! Alas ! that this should be an attain- 



Christ's lordship over the dead and living. 283 

ment of which I fall short so lamentably. Lord Jesus, come ; 
work in me by thy Spirit, so as to move me to say — " The 
life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the 
Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." "To 
me to live is Christ." 



284 WORK FOR THE LORD AND 



XVII. 

WORK EOE THE LOED AND WELFAEE IN 
THE LOED. 

" And the elders of the Jews builded, and they prospered through the 
prophesying of Haggai the prophet and ! Zechariah the son of 
Iddo. And they builded, and finished it, according to the com- 
mandment of the God of Israel, and according to the command- 
ment of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia." — 
Ezra vi. 14. (Haggai i. ii.) 

This is a striking testimony, on the part of the men 
of work to the men of words, or trie word. "The elders 
of the Jews builded." So the leader testifies. " And 
they prospered." Not, however, through their own 
building, though that of course was indispensable, but 
"through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet, and 
Zechariah the son of Iddo." Of the two, the prophesying 
of Haggai, being briefer and more direct than that of 
Zechariah, may be taken as the exponent, both of the state 
of mind among the Jews that needed prophetic ministry, 
and of the sort of ministry provided for it, at the crisis of 
the return from captivity at Babylon. Haggai has three 
messages to deliver. The first, which occupies the first 
chapter, bears the date of the first day of the sixth month of 
the second year of the reign of Darius. The second, which 
is contained in the first nine verses of the second chapter, is 
dated the twenty-first day of the seventh month of the same 
year. And the third, which, closes the book, has for its date, 
twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. The three messages of 



WELFARE IN THE LORD. 285 

Haggai, which I have to deal with, are comprised within the 
space of four months. And these months would seem to fit 
into the year of the favourable response or rescript from the 
Persian king Darius, to which Ezra refers in our text ; 
connecting it devoutly with the commandment of the God 
of Israel. No doubt, Ezra makes mention of the prophesying 
of Haggai and Zechariah, at an earlier stage (ver. 1), at the 
very beginning of Darius' reign. But Haggai's prophesying 
fits in most naturally to the occasion of the later notice 
taken of it by the historian, the liberty given to complete 
the work. Upon this footing, let us look at Haggai's three 
prophetic messages. 

I. The first (chap, i.) is not prophetic at all in our 
modern limited sense of what is prophecy. It contains no 
prediction. It is simply a word of admonition. As such, 
it is in harmony with what was the chief function of the 
Jewish prophets ; whose office was really not so much to 
foretell future events, as to bring to bear authoritatively on 
present sin and duty, on the rebuking of present sin and the 
enforcing of present duty, the principles of the divine 
government as laid down by the law. The special sin here 
rebuked is that of remissness in the present duty of build- 
ing the Lord's house, when the opportunity is given, and all 
things are favourable. Need we wonder at this stirring 
appeal being found necessary % Look at the circumstances 
in which the people are placed. 

Some fifteen or sixteen years have passed since Gyrus, 
conquering the Babylonians, had been moved by God to 
issue the decree for the Jews' return to their own land. 
Immediately on their return, they made it their first care to 
restore the worship of the Lord God of their fathers. They 
erected his altar, resumed the offering of the appointed sacri- 
fices, and kept the Feast of Tabernacles (Ezra iii. 1-5). They 



286 WOEK FOE THE LOED AND 

took steps also for the rebuilding of the Temple ; providing 
men, money, and materials ; and in the second year after 
their restoration, the good work was happily begun (vers. 6-13). 
Very soon, however, it was hindered, and at last arrested, by 
the jealousy of envious neighbours ; especially of that mixed 
people, afterwards known as Samaritans, who dwelt in the 
country which had belonged to the ten tribes (2 Kings xvii. 
24-41), immediately to the north of Jerusalem. They first 
proposed to join with the restored captives of Judah in their 
holy undertaking (Ezra iv. 1-3), urging the plea, " Let us 
build with you, for we seek your God as ye do, and we do 
sacrifice to him." Their proposal was declined, as was their 
religion, however afterwards purified, was still of a very 
motley character (2 Kings xvii. 33), and they were them- 
selves as much heathen as Israelitish, or rather far more : 
on this they were not unnaturally irritated and indignant. 
They could not take any direct and open measures to arrest 
the work on the spot. But by their influence at the Persian 
court they succeeded in so alarming the king, whose subjects 
they as well as the restored Jews were, that he issued 
a decree against the work. It had been going on slowly for 
some years, in consequence of these hostile movements. 
And now, for two years, it ceased altogether. 

So matters stood at the accession of Darius to the throne 
of Persia. That event, as it would seem, was regarded by 
the prophets and princes of Judea as a fitting occasion for 
resuming the work. They may have thought that the new 
monarch, whose mind had not been poisoned by the malicious 
representations of their enemies, might be inclined rather to 
follow out the earlier and better policy of the great Cyrus, 
than to imitate the later and more cowardly tyranny of his 
successor. And they may have considered it a good 
opportunity for testing anew the spirit and the power of their 
adversaries. 



WELFAEE IN THE LORD. 287 

Accordingly, knowing perhaps that they had friends at 
court, such as Ezra himself, on whose influence they might 
rely, the prophets and princes, without waiting for any 
express sanction, took the matter into their own hands, and 
under their auspices, the people began again to build (Ezra 
v. 1-2). Eut their jealous rivals were on the watch and on 
the alert. They moved the provincial governor to interfere 
(ver. 3). He, being either more favourable, or at least more 
impartial, than those who had formerly arrested the work, 
listened to the answer which the Jews, pleading the decree of 
Cyrus, made to his inquiries ; transmitted that answer to 
his master Darius, and determined to await his decision ; 
meanwhile allowing the building to go on (Ezra v. 3-17). 
The decision of Darius, after searching the records, was 
to abide by the original decree of his predecessor Cyrus. 
So then was secured to the Jews full liberty to carry on 
their sacred work ; none of their adversaries daring, at 
least openly, to make them afraid. 

But of this favourable interposition, the people, as it 
would seem, were not so ready as might have been expected 
to take advantage. Erom whatever cause ; the long delay, 
the frequent interruptions, the still remaining discourage- 
ments ; their first love and zeal had begun to cool. In these 
circumstances, the prophet Haggai is sent to arouse them. 
And he does so very faithfully and very pointedly. Their 
excuse is somewhat plausible : " The time is not come ; 
the time that the Lord's house should be built " (Hag. i. 2). 
Things are still too unsettled. The rage of our foes still 
secretly burns ; their wiles are as unscrupulous as ever. 
Their influence at head-quarters is great. Then the king's 
patronage of us is but of yesterday • and therefore doubtful 
and precarious. Had we not better wait a little till we see 
how things turn out 1 Had we not better, for the present, 
proceed cautiously ; giving ourselves to such work as will 



288 WORK FOR THE LORD AND 

attract less notice and give less offence, the providing of what 
all must acknowledge to be necessary for our own accom- 
modation ? By and by, when peace is more secure, and we 
have more leisure and more means, we will gladly resume 
the Lord's work, and set about it in right earnest. But the 
time is not yet. 

The prophet has no patience with so hollow and so 
shallow an apology. Indignantly he retorts upon them in 
the Lord's name : u Is it time for you, ye, to dwell in 
your ceiled houses, and this house He waste 1 " (ver. 4). And 
he adds, in the same name, the exhortation, " Consider your 
ways " (ver. 5). Set your heart on observing your miserably 
selfish policy and its miserable fruit. You have been con- 
sulting for yourselves, your own ease and splendour, instead 
of having pity on the Lord's house lying waste ! With what 
profit ] To what issue ? How sadly have you failed in 
securing your own selfish object ! You have been visited 
with blight, famine, and disease. Your much sowing has 
yielded little reaping. Your meat has not been nourishing 
to you; nor your drink refreshing; nor your clothing warm; 
nor your gains enriching. That has been the effect. And 
what the cause ? " Ye looked for much, and lo ! it came to 
little ; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. 
Why 1 saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house 
which is waste, and ye run every man to his own house " 
(ver. 9). But now consider your ways. It is not yet too 
late. " Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build 
the house ; and I will take pleasure in it ; and I will be 
glorified, saith the Lord " (ver. 8). 

The prophet's warning is not in vain. The rulers, priests, 
and people " obey the voice of the Lord their God and the 
words of Haggai the prophet (as the Lord their God had 
sent him) ; and the people feared before the Lord " (ver. 12). 
Their penitential compliance is at once graciously accepted. 



WELFAEE IN THE LOED. * 289 

Haggai's message now is one of peace and promise ; "lam 
with you, saith the Lord." And before the month is over, 
all hands and all hearts are busily " working in the house of 
the Lord of hosts, their God" (ver. 14). It is the Lord's 
doing. The Lord is glorified. 

II. Haggai's second message (ii. 1-9) partakes more 
of the character of prophecy, in our modern acceptation of 
the term, than his first. And for a natural and obvious 
reason. The partially suspended labour is now resumed. It 
is resumed as a labour of love. Their cold and sluggish self- 
ishness, that helped but very perfunctorily, if at all, in 
the building of the Lord's house, and scarcely kept it from 
an entire stop, so that the work dragged its slow lingering 
length along, while all their care was about their own houses, 
has given place, under the prophet's faithful and friendly 
dealing with them on the part of the Lord, to the zeal of 
godly sorrow and the glow of a fresh awakening. The labour 
is resumed; not as a task, a burden, a weariness of the flesh; 
but as a labour of love ; of much love springing out of a 
sense of much forgiveness. 

But it is resumed under the cloud of sad memories of 
the past. The image of the old temple in its glory rises 
before the eyes of the builders of this new one. When that 
house was built, there was profound peace throughout all the 
borders of their undivided Israel. The wisest of Israel's 
kings had secured, by foreign commerce and powerful foreign 
alliances, the most ample means and advantages for carrying 
out the pious plan of his father David, and turning to the 
best account his munificent preparations. Silver was in 
Jerusalem as stones, and the most costly cedars as the com- 
monest sycamores, for abundance. Then and thus arose that 
goodly structure, all beaming and burning with golden splen- 

u 



290 * WOKK FOE THE LOED AND 

dour, which the patriotism and devotion of all Israel's child- 
ren concurred in making them hold so dear. 

Now all is changed. The feeble remnant of a dispersed 
people, scarcely recovered from long exile, almost strangers 
in the land of their fathers, poor in resources, surrounded by- 
pitiless foes, oiten forced to work with sword in hand, have 
to rear, as best they may, a bare and meagre substitute for the 
temple which had been their nation's boast. No wonder 
that the tears of the old flowed afresh, and even young 
hearts were saddened, amid the shout of praise, because the 
foundation of the house of the Lord was laid ; as Ezra so 
graphically and so tenderly paints the scene ; — " Many of the 
priests and Levites, and chief of the fathers, who were ancient 
men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of 
this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice ; 
and many shouted aloud for joy. So that the people could 
not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of 
the weeping of the people ; for the people shouted with a 
loud shout, and the noise thereof was heard afar off " (Ezra 
iii. 11-13). 

In these circumstances, when the sad memory of the past 
mingles with the chequered joy of the present, the prophet 
has a word in season from the Lord for the people. And it 
is fitly a word prophetic of the future. He does not deny or 
disguise the inferiority of this new erection. He quite 
frankly and most feelingly admits it (ii. 3) : " Who is left 
among you that saw this house in her first glory 1 and 
how do ye see it now ? is it not in your eyes in comparison 
of it as nothing ? " Eut admitting that, Haggai is very bold 
in encouraging rulers, priests, people (ver. 4) : " Be strong, be 
strong, be strong, and work." And he gives strong enough 
reasons for this confident and courageous appeal. 

There is the assurance of the Lord's continued presence 
among them as their covenanted God (vers. 4, 5) : "I am 



WELFAKE IN THE LOED. 291 

with you, saith the Lord ; according to the word that I cove- 
nanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my Spirit 
remaineth among you ; fear ye not." For what really made 
you fearless yourselves, and the cause of fear to all around 
you, in those better days on which you now look back? 
What made you strong 1 Not the magnificent house built 
for me by Solomon, but I, the Lord, who condescended to 
inhabit it ; as Solomon himself gloried in confessing, when 
he dedicated the house, and invoked my name in it ; nay 
not in it, but in that which it shadowed : — "Hear thou in 
heaven thy dwelling-place." 

That ground of strength and fearlessness you had long 
before ; when a curtained tent of wood was the only symbol 
of my presence. You have it still, you may have it always, 
though in this new symbol you see what is little better than 
that tabernacle of old ; nay, though there should be no 
symbol at all, "I am with you." And I am with you on 
the footing, and in terms of that covenant of redemption 
which I made with you, when with blood of atonement and a 
strong arm of power I brought you out of the land of Egypt, 
and out of the house of bondage ; engaging you to be 'my 
people, and myself to be your God. My Spirit remaineth 
among you, to dwell in you, to work in you, to strengthen 
you with might in the inner man. Therefore, fear ye not. 

The rather fear ye not, because, in connection with 
this very house, whose humble aspect, as contrasted with its 
former grandeur, may discourage you, there is to be the 
ushering in of a far better dispensation, more illustrious and 
more enduring than that which seemed to reach its climax 
when Solomon's temple was in all its glory. It may seem 
to be in its decline now, when so poor a substitute for that 
temple is all that can be found. But no. " For thus 
saith the Lord of hosts, Yet once it is a little while, and I 
will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the 



292 WORK FOR THE LORD AND 

dry land. And I will shake all nations, and the desire of 
all nations shall come" (vers. 6, 7). 

I have been shaking you, my chosen people, my nation ; 
shaking you from off your own land ; shaking you so as to 
overturn you, with your city and your temple ; turning you 
over among the heathen. And the shock has been so great 
that even the deliverance I have now wrought out for you, 
and the settlement I have given you in this land again, with 
city and temple in course of being rebuilt, fail to meet 
and redress the stroke. You call to mind the days of old, 
before this terrible shaking of you began ; and fain would 
you have nation, city, temple, as glorious now as then. 

JSTay, but rather look forward. See in prospect, bound 
up with this very house that seems so despicable, a state of 
matters far more glorious than any past prosperity. Another 
shaking, — "yet once more," — a shaking, not of a single 
nation, you, my chosen people, but of heaven and earth 
and sea and dry land ; a universal shaking, — " removing 
those things that are shaken as things that are made, that 
those things which cannot be shaken may remain." Yes ; 
there is to be such " a shaking of all nations." For " the 
desire of all nations shall come." He whom not Israel alone, 
but all the nations need and long for, and fain would wel- 
come, shall come ; to destroy whatever is temporary, shadowy, 
unreal, capable of being shaken and removed, whether 
in the arrangements of human society, or in the institutions 
of a divine yet imperfect economy ; and to set up a " king- 
dom that cannot be moved." He shall come. And when 
he comes, then " I will fill this house with my glory." For 
I am he that is to come, and this is the house to which I 
come. 

For now the riddle is to be read, the mystery opened 
up. What is it that makes this house, in comparison with 
that former one, appear in your eyes as nothing % Is it the 



WELFARE IN THE LORD. 293 

want of splendid adornments within and without % Is 
it the plainness of its outer walls and the homeliness of its 
inner furniture % Is it the lack of anything that means and 
money without stint might promise 1 Nay ; if that were all, 
the deficiency need not last long (ver. 3) : " The silver is mine, 
and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts." But silver 
and gold are not needed to turn the tables in this comparison. 
Silver and gold apart, " The glory of this latter house shall 
be greater than the former, saith the Lord of hosts ; and 
(or for) in this house will I give peace, saith the Lord of 
hosts" (ver. 9). 

For what, in the prophet's view, and in the view of 
earnest, spiritual men among the Israelites, — what really 
constituted the inferiority of this house % In what did it 
consist % Not in the absence from it of what silver and 
gold might provide, but in the absence of that which was the 
true glory of the old temple, as of the tabernacle which pre- 
ceded it, the visible manifestation of the divine presence, the 
Shechinah, the emblem of the divine Majesty dwelling in the 
most holy place, between the cherubim, over the mercy seat. 
That was its chief defect, its only desideratum worth the 
speaking of or the thinking of. When this new house is 
reared, no splendid cloud announces Jehovah's coming to 
take possession of his new abode. He no longer shows 
himself in its sacred precincts. The people have to mourn 
a vacant temple and an empty shrine. But a higher glory 
is in reserve for it ; a glory higher in respect of that very 
outward, palpable, visible manifestation of Jehovah's presence 
which constituted the first temple's real distinction and 
chiefest boast. "I will fill this house with glory." "In 
this place will I give peace." 

It is the eternal Son, the Lord of the temple, the Jehovah 
of Old Testament worship, the Jesus of New Testament 
faith j — it is he who speaks. I appeared in my glory in that 



294 WORK FOR THE LORD AXD 

old house. The Shechinah symbol of my majesty shone all 
through it, and sanctioned in it a ministry of mercy. But 
it was only semblance and sign ; outward semblance, typical 
sign. In this house all is at last to be real. I am to fill it 
with my glory. Personally, I am to be in it ; manifesting 
forth my glory, as the Word made flesh ; the only-begotten 
Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. And I am to 
fill this house with my glory by giving peace in it. That is 
the greater glory of which Haggai speaks, as raising the 
temple then in building above that of Solomon. 

The full meaning of the announcement the people gene- 
rally might not then understand, as we may understand it 
now. We hear Jesus in the temple speaking words of 
peace, and we see him on the cross sealing to us that peace 
with his blood. We see this prophecy literally fulfilled — 
" Here I am personally to appear ; not in cloudy brightness, 
indeed, but in a real, living, human form and nature, which 
is far better. And here I am to appear, not only holding 
out the hope of peace in type, and figure, and promise, but 
actually giving peace, in my own person, as being myself the 
very righteousness of God for you, and the propitiation for 
your sins. ' Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto 
you.' Thus I am to fill this house with my glory. And 
not merely thus, as giving peace ; but also, still further, as 
bringing in the final restitution of all things." 

How glorious, then, is this house, and how holy. Let 
none despise it or profane it. Wherever there is a house 
that is so honoured by the presence in it of the only giver of 
peace and the only restorer of the lost — be it the house or 
temple of an individual believer's soul, or the church which 
is built for a habitation of God by the Spirit — let nothing 
unholy touch it. 

III. The prophet's third and last message (ii. 10-23) bears 



WELFARE IN THE LORD. 295 

upon this practical point. It enforces a lesson of holiness. 
It is ushered in by a formal consultation of the guardians of the 
temple's purity (vers. 1 1-13) — " Thus saith the Lord of hosts,, 
Ask now the priests concerning the law, saying, If one bear 
holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do 
touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it 
be holy 1 And the priests answered and said, No. Then 
said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any 
of these, shall it be unclean ? And the priests answered and 
said, It shall be unclean." So these high authorities laid 
down the law of ordinances, the principle of the ceremonial 
institute ; to the effect that uncleanness is far more easily 
and naturally communicated than holiness. The sacred flesh, 
which for sacred purposes a man may be reverently carrying 
in a loop of his flowing robe, will not impart its own charac- 
ter of sacredness to what it may happen to touch. But the 
slightest accidental contact of what is accounted unclean, as 
of one who is unclean by the handling of a dead body, is 
held to spread contagion and contamination. That is the law 
of outward or ceremonial holiness, as interpreted authori- 
tatively by the priests. It is the prophet's function to give 
it a moral or spiritual application. And so he does, in a 
manner that is alike true and tender. 

The people, it would seem, are in danger of tampering 
with impurity, tolerating pollution, in some mild form, per- 
haps, and some small measure. It may be that they are 
tempted to accept of offered help from doubtful quarters ; to 
avail themselves of means and appliances not strictly in 
accordance with the holy law of God ; and to silence their 
scruples in doing so by the consideration that, being them- 
selves holy, and being engaged in a holy enterprise, neither 
they nor their work were in danger of taking much harm 
from the admission among them of some slightly contami- 
nating element, if it could be turned to account for furthering 



296 WOKK FOR THE LOED AND 

their good and godly cause. Thus there would come in 
arguments of expediency ; pleadings as to the extreme desir- 
ableness of getting on with what they have on hand as fast 
and as far as possible ; and pressing into the service all and 
sundry who may be willing to engage in it. "What pos- 
sible hurt can they do to us ? Nay, on the contrary, may not 
we be of some use to them ? Surely what is evil in them 
and in their ways cannot very seriously contaminate us, 
while what of good there is in us may be blessed to them % 
It is a subtle snare ; besetting the church in all ages ; be- 
setting all its members. 

It is the snare of special pleading ; the so-called science 
of casuistry. May we not, to gain a holy end, let a little of 
worldly policy into our counsels, and some few worldly 
coadjutors into our circle % It will meet so many difficulties, 
soften down so much opposition, and make our path and our 
progress so smooth and so rapid. The risk of evil to our- 
selves may be far more than compensated by the prospect of 
good lessons being taught by us to others, and good influ- 
ences exerted by us on them. 

Alas ! we need to learn the sad truth brought out by the 
consultation the prophet bids us have with the priests. They 
know that in their province, within the range of their func- 
tions as guardians of the purity of the ceremonial worship, 
the holiest thing a man can carry about with him upon his 
person will not sanctify by contact the commonest household 
article ; while one who has contracted the pettiest and most 
accidental taint of uncleanness will spread the contagion far 
and wide among all he meets with. So is it in the spiritual 
sphere. Therefore let the people beware. Let them remem- 
ber the case of Achan. Let them lay to heart the proverb, 
" A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." Let them 
rid themselves of any leaven of wickedness, any germ 
of iniquity, which they may have been cherishing or 



WELFAEE IN THE LORD. 297 

allowing within their borders. Let them again consider 
their ways. 

Yes j consider what but lately you suffered (vers. 15-17), 
before you resumed so heartily your labour of laying stone 
upon stone in the temple of the Lord ; how you were dis- 
appointed in all your hopes, and smitten with judgments in 
all your works, because you turned not to me, saith the Lord. 
And consider (ver. 1 8) what is before you, how from this very 
day, the day of your fairly and faithfully applying yourselves 
to the building of the Lord's house, though as yet the harvest 
appears not, still the Lord has promised, and is beginning 
to bless you. Consider the judgment behind and the bless- 
ing before ; and learn that it is best to trust in the Lord 
alone, and cleave to the Lord alone, without going down to 
Egypt for help, or letting doubtful Egyptian men and doubtful 
Egyptian measures come in among you. 

Better far, when tempted to yield to discouraging and 
disheartening thoughts, suggesting any such doubtful expedi- 
ents of help or of relief, better accept the assurance and pledge 
which in his final message the prophet, on the Lord's part, 
once more gives (vers. 20-23) of the ultimate triumph of his 
people, and the ultimate completed beauty and glory of the 
temple they are building for him. He points the eye of their 
faith forward. He bids them fix it, moreover, on a single 
man; the one great Priest of the temple, the King and Head 
of whom Zerubbabel is the representative ; the man Christ 
Jesus, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever ; the signet, 
the seal of Jehovah's faithfulness ; his chosen one, in whom 
he delighteth, and for whose sake he will make Jesus alone 
a praise and rejoicing, and will fill all the earth as his temple 
with his glory. 

For practical application, let me ask you to consider if 
there is not a close connection to be traced — a connection in 
the nature of things as well as by special divine dealing — 



298 WORK FOR THE LORD AND 

between your working for the Lord in the building of his 
house, and your own personal welfare ; the peace, prosperity, 
and progress of your souls, in the edifying of yourselves, the 
working out of your own salvation. 

The three causes which are apt to hinder your faithful 
zeal in building for the Lord ; selfish sloth, content to get good, 
thinking it time for that, but not counting it time yet to 
be doing good ; unbelieving despondency, apt to despise the 
day of small things, to sit down and weep because the build- 
ing which you have to help on now and here is nothing when 
compared with the building that went on once, or the build- 
ing that is going on yonder ; carnal security, becoming toler- 
ant of evil, thinking no harm can come from doubtful fellow- 
ships, and some partial concessions in the line of worldly 
expediency and worldly conformity ; — these cancerous sores, 
eating away all your heart for the Lord's work — are they not 
the bane also of your own spiritual life 1 blighting to you the 
most plentiful means of spiritual nourishment and refresh- 
ment, stinting your spiritual growth, causing you, amid 
abundant promise of spiritual food, to starve and pine away 1 
The Lord will not, he cannot, bless you personally while you 
yield to these temptations to slackness in the business in which 
he would engage you ; the business of seeking out from amid 
the world's ruins stones for his living temple, doing what in 
you lies to build up Christ's spiritual house, to win souls to 
him, to feed his lambs and his sheep, helping them to abide 
in him. 

Ee strong and work, is his appeal to you. Say not 
" The time is not come." Think not the work too in- 
significant, anything you can do too trifling and mean to be 
acknowledged. Do what you can. Suffer not, touch not, 
the unclean thing, as if you might take your ease, and let 
holiness take its course as it may. Come out and be separate. 
Be up and doing, emptied of self, full of zeal for God ; not 



WELFAKE IN THE LOED. 299 

underrating what he suffers you and enables you to do for 
him ; not doing it listlessly, as if it were not worth while ; 
but doing it heartily, as unto the Lord, who accepteth what 
you do, not according to what you have not, but according 
to what you have ; and finally, not giving way or giving in to 
evil, whether around you or within you, as if you could do 
nothing but allow things just to go on without much care or 
concern on your part about them. No ! rather resist unto 
blood, striving against sin. Be purged anew of uncleanness, 
and say — " Here am I, Lord ; send me." 

Mark these three snares well ; snares alike fatal to your 
work for the Lord, and to your own welfare in the Lord. 
And mark them as the three successive stages or steps in a 
downward course. 

First, there is the dilatory putting off, the sluggard's lazy 
begging, A little more sleep, a little more slumber. Time 
enough ! Time enough for this or that exertion, this or that 
sacrifice, this or that toil or trial ! Ah ! it is time, you 
admit, for your own selfish sloth to be gratified. " Soul, 
take thine ease." Ay ! and it is high time for you to awake 
out of sleep. 

Then there is the feeble, querulous complaint of impo- 
tency, the affected pleading of your weakness, the uselessness 
of your doing anything, since you can do so little. Why 
bestir yourselves ? "What have you in your power 1 What, 
after all, is all that you can effect 1 How far short of what 
you would deem worthy of God and of yourselves ! If you 
could do some great thing, — build a temple like the former, 
— you might have some inducement to exert your energies ! 
But so feeble and broken as you are, what can you do 1 

Ah ! how near, in such a mood of mind, is the last land- 
ing-place in this sliding scale of declension ! How certain 
is the result ! You become listlessly, lazily, secure and 
self-confident ; indifferent, insensible, to the presence, the 



300 WOEK FOR THE LORD AND WELFARE IN THE LORD. 

power, the prevalence, of contaminating worldliness and un- 
godliness. For there is no security against acquiescence in 
evil but striving after good. Well did David pray in that 
19th Psalm — "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse 
thou me from secret faults ; keep back thy servant also from 
presumptuous sins ; let not them have dominion over me : 
then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the 
great transgression." And well also did he add, as his only 
security against the backsliding which he deprecated, the 
petition for grace to make positive attainments and positive 
progress in well-doing — " Let the words of my mouth, and 
the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, 
Lord, my strength and my redeemer" (Ps. xix. 12-14). 



THE RIGHTEOUS EEWARD. 301 



XVIII. 
THE KIGHTEOUS EEWAED. 

' ' For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, 
which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered 
to the saints, and do minister." — Hebrews vi. 10. 

' ' Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in 
Egypt : for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. " — 
Hebrews xi. 26. 

"What is said of Moses, that " lie had respect unto the 
recompense of the reward," may seem at first sight to detract 
from the disinterestedness of his conduct in refusing to be 
called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to 
suffer affliction with the people of God ; " esteeming the re- 
proach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." 
There are devout men who sincerely think, or vaguely feel, 
that the admission of any such motive as an element in the 
Christian life is somehow inconsistent with the free grace of 
the gospel and the nature of evangelical obedience, as not 
a mercenary service for a remuneration, but a pure labour of 
love. And doubtless these two ways of walking with God 
may be broadly and generally distinguished, as differing 
from one another in spirit, in compass or extent, and in 
actual effect. The contrast between a servile and a filial 
submission to the divine will is to be always kept in view. 

At the same time, there is risk of error in pushing the 
contrast too far, or applying the principle of it indiscreetly. 
There is the danger of a sort of sentimental morbidness. 



302 THE RIGHTEOUS REWARD. 

For it has a certain air of loyalty and chivalry to stand 
upon the footing of not asking or accepting requital for any 
favour ; to decline all acknowledgment of service rendered 
or benefit conferred ; and to insist on whatever we do or 
give being out and out spontaneous and gratuitous. Between 
man and man, giving and receiving good, such a state of 
things is far from satisfactory. The state of mind which 
it indicates is neither generous nor gracious. There is pride, 
selfish and suspicious, on one side or other ; or on both. 

To introduce any such feeling into the domain of personal 
piety is a still sadder and more fatal mistake. And yet it 
has been not uncommon. It has been frequently exempli- 
fied in the history of the church's inner life, in various forms 
of mysticism and pietism. But invariably the type is one 
and the same. It is the idea of such utterly unselfish, self- 
ignoring, disinterestedness in serving or submitting to God, 
as precludes all regard to one's own welfare, and all considera- 
tion of what one may receive as a prize at the hands of God. 
The tendency of all such ultra-sentimentalism and transcen- 
dentalism is to undermine the sense of obligation and re- 
sponsibility. Hence accordingly, in its more common line 
of influence, it fosters the conceit of the natural mind. Our 
lips are our own. We are our own masters. Leave us to 
ourselves. Let us take our own method of expressing and 
proving our duty, gratitude, trust, and love. Let us not 
be tied down by precise rules. Let us not be dictated 
to, or forced, or bribed. Leave us at liberty. And let it 
be seen, if we will not, of our own accord, and not only 
without regard to ultimate personal advantage, but spurning 
all that away, be and do all that you could wish. 

Before disposing of this somewhat plausible view, either 
in its higher spiritual aspect, or in its lower, it may be useful 
to consider, as on the side, not of man's sentiments, but of 
God's manner of dealing with man, and especially with 



THE RIGHTEOUS REWARD. 303 

Christian or believing man, what is the principle upon 
which God proceeds in his dispensing of the recompense of 
the reward to which he would have us, like Moses, to have 
respect. That ^principle is brought out in the text — " God 
is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, 
which ye have showed toward his name, in that ye have 
ministered to the saints, and do minister." 

The peculiarity lies here in the expression, " God is not 
unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love." It 
concerns, not his goodness and generosity merely, but his 
righteousness, that he should remember your good works ; 
to recompense and requite them. 

There is, of course, one very obvious sense in which this 
statement may be said to be true ) to be indeed almost a mere 
truism. It may be considered as referring to the promises and 
pledges which God has been graciously pleased to give in his 
word ; to the effect that no service or sacrifice in his cause, 
and on his behalf, shall be unrequited ; that not the giving of a 
cup of cold water in his name shall in any wise lose its reward. 
God must redeem his pledges, and make good his promises. 
He is not untrue, unfaithful, unrighteous ; as he would 
be if he did not. 

Very manifestly, however, such an interpretation, though 
sound so far as it goes, does not exhaust, if indeed it at all 
touches, the real meaning of the text. For the gracious act of 
God in not forgetting, but, on the contrary, remembering and 
recompensing his people's work and labour of love, is here 
represented, not merely as righteous on the ground of a pledge 
or promise on his part, but as righteous in itself. For the 
question is not on what principle God is simply righteous in 
doing a certain thing when he has freely bound himself in 
covenant and by promise to do it, and would be unrighteous 
if he did not do it ; but on what principle, whether he binds 
himself in covenant or not, it is a right thing for him to do 



304 THE EIGHTEOUS KEWAED. 

it, and would be an unrighteous thing not to do it. For 
that is what is affirmed when it is said " God is not un- 
righteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye 
have showed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to 
the saints, and do minister." 

Taking that view of the text, and considering the prin- 
ciple which it brings out generally, without regard in the 
meantime to the connection in winch it stands, there are 
several interesting and affecting lights in which it may be 
placed. 

I. God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour 
of love ; inasmuch as his doing so would be ungenerous, 
ungracious, unkind. "Were he not to remember and ac- 
knowledge it, he might seem to be damping your zeal. In 
this view, the statement is fitted seasonably to cheer and 
encourage you. You are apt to be ashamed of the services 
which you render to him. They are so worthless in them- 
selves, and so marred and stained with sin in the very ren- 
dering of them, that you can scarcely believe it possible for 
them to come up as prayer and alms, to be heard, and had in 
remembrance in the sight of God. 

But now consider, as regards this matter, not what you 
deserve, but what it is becoming and worthy of himself that 
God should do. Few and faulty your best services may be ; 
unsatisfying to yourselves ; much more to your God. "Well 
might he reject them all. But would he be justified in doing 
so 1 Would it be in harmony with what he has revealed to 
you of the riches of his glory, and what he has made you to 
taste of the fulness of his grace 1 I can conceive of an 
earthly benefactor taking pleasure in showing me his love ; 
and at the same time taking a perverse pleasure in mortifying 
every desire on my part to show my love to him. He may 
be vain and capricious ; or jealous and proud ; fond of the 



THE RIGHTEOUS REWARD. 305 

assertion of superiority in bestowing a gift, and refusing to 
accept any sort of acknowledgment in return. Not such is 
the manner of God, it is not thus that he has been dealing 
with you j receiving you graciously ; giving liberally and 
upbraiding not. And now, when he puts it into your hearts 
to long after offering to him some gift for all his benefits to 
you, can it be imagined that he should coldly or contemp- 
tuously ignore the gift 1 No. He does not upbraid you with 
the value of his undeserved benefits to you. He will not 
upbraid you with the worthlessness of what you give to him. 
All that he bestows, he bestows in good faith. All that you 
render, he will take in good part. For he is not unrighteous 
to forget you work and labour of love. 

II. God is not unrighteous to forget your work and 
labour of love ; inasmuch as his doing so would be incon- 
sistent with his faithfulness and truth. I do not now refer 
to his faithfulness and truth as keeping his promise and ful- 
filling his word. That is a human virtue ; rooted no doubt 
in the divine attribute of unchangeableness ; but still, I 
would say, merely human. 

I refer to his faithfulness and truth in a higher view ; in 
the view of his sovereignty over you and his right of pro- 
perty in you. In that view, he is to be regarded as hiring 
you ; engaging you to be his servants ; and assigning to you 
your service. He does so, in the exercise of his own un- 
questionable discretion ; according to his own good pleasure, 
and the freedom of his own will. So he sends you into his 
vineyard. He does not leave it to you to devise a way in 
which you may, at your own discretion, manifest your loyalty. 
He welcomes you indeed as volunteers ; made willing by 
himself in the day of his power. But he enlists you as his sol- 
diers and subjects, under command. You are to offer service 

x 



306 THE EIGHTEOUS EEWARD. 

voluntarily. But when your offer is accepted, you are to 
obey orders. 

This consideration may seem, in one view, to diminish 
or detract from any claim on your part for any recompense 
of reward. It divests your work and labour of love, which 
you show to his name, of the character of a spontaneous, or 
strictly self-prompted and self-directed offering. What you 
do or suffer is not at your own hand, but by his appoint- 
ment. 

But, in another view, the certainty of your being amply 
recompensed and repaid is thus placed on the highest pos- 
sible ground. " Lord, truly I am thy servant : I am thy 
servant and the son of thy handmaid ; thou hast loosed my 
bonds. Thou hast broken every other yoke; and I take 
thy yoke upon me. I wait thy commands. What wouldst 
thou have me to do 1 " Such is the attitude of believing sub- 
mission. It is not indeed an attitude so gratifying to my natural 
self-esteem, as that which I may once have been disposed to 
assume, when, in the exercise of my own independent liberty 
of choice, I thought of presenting an unasked and unpre- 
scribed gift, as if in compliment to my Maker and Redeemer, 
for his gifts to me. But it is a position safer far, and more 
becoming. I feel indeed that I have nothing which, as from 
myself, I can offer to my God. I am myself his property ; 
his purchased possession ; not my own, but bought with a 
price. And all that I have is his ; by right of redemption 
his ; as I am his. Nay, what have I that I have not re- 
ceived ? Who am I that I should be able or willing to offer 
after any sort 1 All the store of talents and resources out 
of which I can offer comes from him, and is all his own. 
And I, his servant, must offer it, not as I choose, but as he 
desires and directs. 

But does that thought, I ask again, detract in the least 
from my confident persuasion that what I offer will be 



THE RIGHTEOUS REWARD. 307 

accepted and requited 1 Does it not, on the contrary, enhance 
my assurance tenfold 1 He makes me his servant. He 
assigns to me my work. He fits me for my work. And he 
is not unrighteous to forget my work. That he condescends 
to employ and engage me in work for him is a pledge of his 
purpose to reward me. That he does so employ me at all is 
great condescension on his part. He has no need of me. My 
goodness reaches not to him. And are not all the angels his 
ministering servants ? Why should he engage me in his 
service 1 But he has engaged me. He does engage me. 
And that he may engage me wholly to himself, he breaks 
and cancels all other engagements. He commits himself to 
you, believers. Yes. To you he commits the honour of his 
name, the interests of his cause and kingdom, the well-being 
of his people, and of all his creatures. For it is as serving 
him that you do good to them. As being his servants alone, 
he insists on your having no other master. He hires you to 
be his ; altogether his. All your time and all your treasure, 
every moment of the one, every mite of the other, he claims 
as his. And by- all the sanctions of his absolute sovereignty ; 
his rich, redeeming love ; his free and all-powerful grace ; 
he vindicates his right to have all the desires of your hearts 
and all the doings of your hands turned to account for his 
glory. 

* Would it be fair, handsome, honourable, for a master en- 
listing servants in such a way, on such terms, under such obli- 
gations, in such a service, to forget their work, to let it pass 
into oblivion, thankless and unrequited % Be it that it is 
work or service to which they are indispensably bound at any 
rate, and which they have no discretionary liberty to accept or 
decline ; for which, therefore, they have no title to stipulate 
for payment beforehand, or to demand payment afterwards. 
Be it even that they understand that condition of their en- 
gagement, and consent to it, and are willing to reckon the 



308 THE KIGHTEOUS KEWAKD. 

whole of their work to be a labour of mere love. That does 
not acquit or exonerate the master, in his own judgment at 
least, whatever they may think. If he is honest, upright, 
high-minded, he will not suffer his servants to entertain a 
moment's doubt of his intention to acknowledge their faith- 
fulness, and make all the world know that he does so. 

And is God unrighteous % Is he who solemnly binds 
you in so strict a covenant of service to let it be supposed 
that he can act unfaithfully or unfairly % Nay ; so scrupulous 
is he, that even when he employs an enemy in any service, 
he punctually, not to say punctiliously, pays him for it. 
Because Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon caused his army 
to serve a great service against Tyrus, the Lord gave him 
the land of Egypt for his hire, to be the wages for his army 
(see Ezek. xxix. 18-20). And is he unrighteous to forget your 
work and labour of love ; the work and loving labour of his 
chosen and his redeemed % Surely it is no vain thing, but 
rather a very blessed thing, for you thus to serve the Lord, 
having such a simple, single-eyed, meek, and honourable con- 
fidence as this in the truth and faithfulness of him whom 
you serve ! You make no selfish or sordid stipulations. You 
strike no careful balance of consequences and calculations. 
You raise no nice and subtle points of claims and counter- 
claims. You ask no questions. Freely and fearlessly you 
cast yourselves upon the Lord, for the requital of your service, 
even as you cast yourselves upon him for the pardon of your 
iniquities ; not doubting, but believing that as he is faithful 
and just to forgive you your sins, so he is not unrighteous 
to forget your work and labour of love. 

III. There are other considerations of a general sort that 
might be brought forward to strengthen this quiet assurance. 
For instance, here is one. If, in one view, God commits 
himself to you ; in another view he commits you and binds 



THE RIGHTEOUS REWARD. 309 

you to himself. He commits you, if you are indeed engaged 
as servants in his house and kingdom, to a life of self-denial 
and of self-sacrifice. He brings you away from the fleshpots of 
Egypt ; the dainties of Pharaoh's table, the wealth and pomp 
of Pharaoh's court. And it is but reasonable to believe that 
he must indemnify you for any loss or damage you may 
sustain on his account. On this footing our Lord himself 
very plainly puts the matter. 

When Peter says, "Lord, we have left all and have followed 
thee," being inclined almost to make a boast or make a merit 
of that self-impoverishment, as against the rich, or those who 
trust in riches, for whom it is hard to enter into the kingdom 
of God; and when he adds the inquiry, " What shall we have, 
therefore 1 " Jesus, partly to humble and partly to encourage, 
desires his over-officious if not over-anxious disciple to cease 
from being careful for anything, and to leave all to the 
Master. He will see to it, it concerns his righteousness to 
see to it, that " every one that has forsaken houses, or breth- 
ren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or 
lands, for his name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and 
shall inherit everlasting life." 

So also, with reference to the persecution which the Lord 
had said must accompany, and, as it were, condition or limit 
the fulfilment of this promise, the apostle Paul makes the 
certainty of ultimate deliverance from it turn on the same 
sort of consideration : " It is a righteous thing with God to 
recompense tribulation to them that trouble you, and to you 
who are troubled, rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be 
revealed from heaven with his mighty angels." 

In the service of God, if loyal and true, you must make 
up your mind to relinquish or forego not a few of those 
sources of pleasure and enjoyment which the world presents 
to you. And for whatever you may thus give up, he whom 
you serve may be expected, if he is to act worthily of him- 



310 THE EIGHTEOUS REWARD. 

self, to provide some kind of equivalent. If you lose the 
favour of men, you have the favour of God. If you cease to 
have the peace which the world gives, when, with its refuges 
of lies, it soothes your conscience ; you have the peace of God 
which passes understanding, the peace which Jesus gives, 
his own peace, which, when dying, he bequeaths and leaves 
to dying sinners. If you have to cut off a right hand, to 
pluck out a right eye ; maimed as you are and wounded, you 
enter into life. If the good things of earth are to be your 
treasure no more ; you have better treasure in heaven, where 
no moth corrupts, and no thief breaks through to steal. You 
are prevented now from giving full scope, in the line of the 
world's pursuits, to that principle of your nature which 
prompts you to acquire and to accumulate. But it is the 
glory of the gospel that it does not propose to suppress a 
principle so powerful, and, in its place, so useful. Eather 
it turns it to good account. For the work and labour of love 
assuredly affords ample room and scope for its exercise. 

Yes, ye believing and loving servants of the Lord ! 
You are cut off from the calculations of earthly ambition and 
earthly covetousness. But the calculations of heaven are all 
before you ; and in these you may be as ambitious and as 
covetous as you please. You are no longer at liberty to lay 
up for yourselves perishable riches. But of the riches which 
are eternal you never can lay up enough. You may go 
about your work and labour of love in the very spirit of one 
most sedulously, earnestly, vehemently, heaping up treasure. 
Only the treasure is in heaven, not on earth. And you may 
be very sure that the more you are expending your strength 
and substance for the Lord now, the larger will the store be 
growing of the recompense of glory and of joy awaiting you 
in the time to come. It must be so. For God is not un- 
righteous. He withdraws you in great measure from a field 
of labour in which your toil and trouble would have been 



THE RIGHTEOUS REWARD. 311 

crowned with its due meed of success ; in which your diligent 
hand would have made you rich, and you would have had 
your reward. Must he not make up to you for that loss ] 
Must he not, in the new field in which he sets you to work, 
so proportion your reward to your diligence that you shall 
not have less to stimulate and encourage you in his service 
than you would have had in the service of the world ? 
Surely it must he so. For God is not unrighteous to forget. 

Thus far, I have spoken of the recompense of the reward ; 
God's not forgetting your work and labour of love ; as 
simply righteous on his part. But, before leaving that topic, 
I must remind you that the righteousness is still always 
of grace. 

It is the righteousness, not of law, but of equity. It 
gives you no such claim or title as you might enforce in a 
court of justice, by procedure of a legal sort. All your 
claim must rest upon the good faith or kind favour of the 
other party. This does not touch the certainty of your 
being righted and rewarded. But it divests you of all title 
to demand it or to reckon upon it as your due. How 
blessed a thing is it in this view, to disown all right of yours, 
and lean on the righteousness of God ! 

Further, the righteousness in question is not that of express 
compact, but rather that of a fair, reasonable, and amiable 
understanding. It is not a case, as between debtor and 
creditor, to be adjusted upon a balance of business accounts 
and books. Your remuneration is rather an honourable 
acknowledgment of the spirit in which you work, than an 
exact and formal discharge of the work itself. Hence, this 
principle, while it leaves no room for presumption on your 
part, leaves abundant room for the most large and liberal 
discretion on the part of God. He is not tied down by any 
minute and martinet rule, in dispensing his favours. He 



312 THE RIGHTEOUS REWARD. 

may do according to his own pleasure, in bestowing his 
rewards on them that serve him. 

It is this principle, substantially, which is brought out 
in the parable of the labourers sent successively into the 
vineyard. Why does the Lord pay so liberally the labourers 
hired at the eleventh hour ] Why does he not make a 
distinction between them and those who had borne the 
burden and heat of the day? Is he unrighteous here 1 ? 
Nay ! If those first called will stand upon their strict claim 
of right j pleading it, not for their own indemnification, but 
in bar of a benefit to their fellow labourers ; the answer is 
clear and conclusive. No wrong is done to you. Take 
what is yours. All that you stipulated for, all that I agreed 
with you for, take. Much good may it do you in your 
present envious frame of mind ! But is that jealous mind 
of yours to limit me in my bountiful dealing with those 
who, though called later into the field, are as ripe and ready 
for the reward, in my view, as, after all your long service, 
I find you to be 1 Nay ! Are they not riper and readier 
even than you 1 Is your evil eye then to hinder the outflow 
of [my goodness to them ? You have what is yours ; I do 
what I will with my own. And as I will not be unrighteous 
to forget, I will not be straitened in requiting any work or 
labour of love shown to my name. 

Here I close with some practical applications of the 
truth I have been unfolding. 

1. As God is not unrighteous to forget your work and 
labour of love, be not ye unrighteous to forget your duty to 
him. As he is, so to speak, on honour with you, be you 
scrupulously and sensitively on honour with him. Let your 
conscientious faithfulness in dealing with him correspond in 
some suitable measure to his generous faithfulness in owning 
and recompensing your work and labour of love. And, as it 



THE EIGHTEOUS REWARD. 313 

is not according to any narrow, frigid, niggardly calculation ; 
but freely, largely, bountifully, munificently ; that tie shows 
himself to be not unrighteous in rewarding you ; so let it 
be in the same liberal spirit, that you show yourselves to be 
not unrighteous in your work and labour of love towards his 
name. 

Many motives should prompt this duty. Think on the 
way in which he receives you into his favour; on the 
amazing sacrifice of his Son, whom he gives to the death of 
the cross, that he may reconcile you to himself ; receiving 
you graciously, and loving you freely. Consider how he 
treats you in his Son Jesus Christ ; as not servants merely, 
acquitted of blame and justified, but sons whom, in his 
Son, he loves, as he loves him. And say if you can be con- 
tented with rendering to such a God and Father a mere 
homage of necessity. He opens his heart to you. Will 
you not give your hearts to him ? 

2. If God is not unrighteous to forget your work and 
labour of love towards his name, you need not care to re- 
member it. You need not keep a record of your doings. 
Your record and theirs is on high. You want no register 
of them here, on the earth. You may let them slip out of 
your memory. 

And if they slip out of the memory of your brethren 
and friends, whom you may have specially obliged, and are 
overlooked or misconstrued by the world, you need not take 
that very much amiss. God is not unrighteous to forget 
them. It was towards his name that you meant to show 
your love. And is not his remembrance of that enough % 
What more would you have % Will it not be recompense of 
reward enough, when the Lord, at his appearing, reminds 
you of good offices done to his little ones; which had 
escaped not only your recollection afterwards, but even your 
notice at the time ; when you ask, in astonished rapture, 



314 THE KIGHTEOUS KEWAKD. 

" Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or thirsty, or naked, 
or sick, or in prison, and visited thee 1 " and when in answer 
yon receive the marvellous attestation and acknowledgment 
of your work and labour of love, " Inasmuch as ye did it 
to the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me." 

3. For that is the kind of service, the work and labour 
of love towards God's name, indicated in both of our texts. 
In the cases of Moses, it is his choosing to suffer affliction 
with the people of God. In the case of the Hebrew Chris- 
tians, it is their having ministered to the saints, and still 
ministering. In both cases, what God is .not unrighteous 
to forget, is sympathy with his people and ministration to 
their necessities. It is your love to them springing from his 
love to you. Your love, because he first loved you. And 
you manifest your love by words and deeds of kindly interest 
and active beneficence. Your fellow-men are the direct and 
immediate objects of your attentions and assiduities. You 
visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction. You speak 
a word in season to the weary. You feed the hungry. You 
clothe the naked. You give a cup of cold water to the 
thirsty. And what you do to them, you do to the Lord. 
He counts himself to be your debtor on their behalf. 
And for him, as for you, "it is more blessed to give than 
to receive." 

4. And what does he give 1 What is the nature of the 
recompense of the reward 1 It is not such as a mercenary, 
self-righteous worshipper would care for. It is not a prize 
won by merit. It is simply grace, more grace. What was 
it in the case of Moses 1 ? It was the reproach of Christ 
that he preferred to the treasures of Egypt. And it was 
Christ himself, seen, though invisible, that was his exceed- 
ing great reward. What was it in the case of the Hebrew 
Christians ? What but security against the terrible back- 
liding of which the apostle warned them ? "lam persuaded 






THE KIGHTEOUS REWARD. 315 

better things of you, and things that accompany salvation." 
What but progress in the divine life and the assurance of 
that hope " which is an anchor of the soul, sure and stedfast, 
and that entereth into that within the veil, whither the fore- 
runner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for 
ever, after the order of Melchisedec" ? 



THE END. 



Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. 



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